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A Little Maid 
of Acadie. 


MARIAN C. L. REEVES. 


(The Gainsborough Series .) 

f. 

i 


NEW YORK: 

D. APPLETON & CO. 


THE GAINSBOROUGH SERIES. 


Mrs. Gainsborough’s Diamonds. By Julian Hawthorne. 
A Struggle. A Story in Four Parts. By Barnet Phillips. 

Samuel Brohl and Company. From the French of Victor 
Cherbuliez. 

Geier-Wally: A Tale of the Tyrol. From the German 

of Wilhelmine von Hillern. 

Modern Fishers of Men. By George L. Raymond. 

Dr. Heidenhoff s Process. By Edward Bellamy. 
John-a-Dreams. By Julian Sturgis. 

An Accomplished Gentleman. By Julian Sturgis. 

An Attic Philosopher in Paris. From the French of 

Emile Souvestre. 

Miss Gascoigne. By Mrs. J. H. Riddell. 

The Story of Colette. From the Original, “ La Neuvaine 
de Colette.” 

A Little Maid of Acadie. By Marian C. L. Reeves. 
Uniform stylo. 12mo, paper cover. Price, 25 cents each. 

New York: D. APPLETON & CO., 1, 3, & 5 Bond Street. 

IN PARADISE. 

A Novel. 

From the German of PAUL HEYSE. 

A new edition. In two volumes. 12mo, half bound (in boards, with red cloth 
backs and paper sides). 

“ We may call ‘ In Paradise ’ a great novel with the utmost confidence in our judg- 
ment of \V'—New York Evening Post. 

Price for the two volumes, $1.50. 


New York : D. APPLETON & CO., 1, 3, & 5 Bond Street. 


A LITTLE MAID 




OF ACADIE 


BY 





MARIAN C. L. REEVES 


AUTHOR OF “OLD MARTIN BOSCAWEN’S JEST,” ETC, 





Cor. — And how like you this shepherd’s life. 
Master Touchstone ? 

Touch.— Truly, shepherd, in respect of it- 
self, it is a good life ; but in respect that it is a 

shepherd’s life, it is naught In respect 

it is in the fields, it pleaseth me well ; but in 
respect it is not in the court, it is tedious. 

As You Like It. 




MAY 21 > 


m 




NEW YORK 

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
1888 








Copyright, 1888, 

By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


i. 

“ In the hollow by the stream 
That beach leans down into, of which you said 
The Oread in it has a Naiad’s heart, 

And pines for waters.” 

A stony hollow, down among the hills. The 
very spot where, when at the creation rock and 
earth were being sown broadcast over the face of 
the globe, the rocks wore through the bottom of 
the sack that held them, trickling thick and fast 
m a gray stream that frets the brown little mount- 
ain river hurrying to the St. John. 

A spot wild and untrodden since that day, one 
might have said ; but for the bleaching skeletons 
of trees that bristle up the slopes, and tell where 
lumber-camps have been, and gone. Young trees 
and alders and tall ferns are trying fast to cover 
up the havoc these have made ; and where they 
cluster closest, the stream broadens out, giving 


4 : 


A LirTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


babbling promise of a shallow ford, so clear as it 
runs over the pebbles. 

A promise which old Dobbin, wiser than his 
rider, knew better than to trust ; for he made 
what protest he could, sidling on the margin, be- 
fore he went floundering into a treacherous pool 
midway. As Dr. Kendal pulled him up rather 
roughly, having taken more water than he liked, 
a peal of mocking laughter rang out, up-stream. 

Now, to be mounted on a sorry nag is quite 
mortification enough to a good horseman, without 
the added aggravation of providing amusement 
for a by-stander — in search of whom, Kendal 
turned half angrily in his saddle, and caught 
sight of a gray something drifting with the twi- 
light shadows half-way across the water. 

So dim was it, amid those shadows, that it 
might almost be mistaken for the evening mist ; 
or, if one were fanciful, for malicious water- 
sprite, that 

“ . . . mid her reeds 
Pressed her cold finger closer to her lip,” 

checking her involuntary laughter as she saw her- 
self discovered. But Kendal, being of a practical 
bent, instantly inferred stepping-stones. 

The small gray, hurried figure had flitted 
over to the opposite bank, vanishing in the trees, 
while Kendal still drew bridle, half minded to 


A. LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


5 


ride after, and demand why she had left him to 
flounder through the water here, while she could 
have given a hint of the ford above ? 

However, there was something she had shown 
him, whether she would or no : the opening 
through the wood, which elsewhere closed in, 
impenetrably thick and matted. 

Kendal had ridden down into the hollow, 
beckoned by a thin wave of chimney-smoke from 
the house to which he had been called to visit a 
new patient. 

A starveling signal, to be flung out from the 
high-sounding De Landremont homestead. But 
Kendal had been long enough in the Madawaska 
region to look for nothing on a larger scale than 
the trim cottages of the hcibitans. With their 
quaintly sloping whitewashed roofs set in ruddy 
buckwheat patches, or yellowing strips of late- 
ripening grain, they spread along the natural 
terraces of the river St. John, and up into the 
skirts of the forest, whither the old Acadians fled, 
a century ago ; or such among the old Acadians, 
Evangeline’s compatriots, as happily escaped the 
English ships that would have carried them into 
exile. In this safe refuge, on the summer farms 
or in the winter lumber-camps, the years went by : 
in Acadie, as the habitans dreamed, until one day 
they woke, and found that Maine had reached 
out her boundary-line, and drawn some of them 


6 A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 

in just here. On each side of that line, some- 
times imaginary, sometimes the clear, broad, twist- 
ing band of the St. John, the old Acadian fami- 
lies remain, one half “ American,” one half pro- 
vincial, both halves wholly French ; though will- 
ingly enough making room among themselves 
for an outsider such as Dr. Kendal. 

He meanwhile had reached the gap where his 
unwitting guide had vanished ; pushed his way 
along the path on which the alders trespassed ; 
and emerged on a wide open space which might 
once have been garden, but where now scrub 
spruce and firs were straggling, and sumac thrust 
its coarse red pompons in the stead of flowers. 
In the midst, a rambling cottage, larger than the 
wont, but gray and leaning to decay, and with 
that niggardly line of smoke wavering above. 

It was the one sign of occupancy about the 
place ; so Kendal followed it, flinging his bridle 
over a half-sunken gate-post — gate there was none 
— and crossing the furze-grown, wood-littered yard 
to the door. 

His knock was unanswered. But the line of 
windows with that gaunt and hollow-eyed look 
which the want of curtains always gives, offered 
him no encouragement to try farther on. # The 
chimney-smoke was at least something promis- 
ing ; so, after a moment’s hesitation, he lifted the 
latch. 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


7 


It was a long, low-raftered kitchen into which 
he was invited by the firelight. The flames went 
dancing about a row of tins on the tall dresser- 
shelves ; catching at the polished circle of the spin- 
ning-wheel, and the high wooden settle against the 
wall ; glancing over at the brasses of a credence, 
an old-fashioned press, just opposite ; thence slink- 
ing back behind the black pot hung in the great 
roomy chimney, and flickering out again with 
brightening touches upon what Kendal only just 
then caught sight of. 

A fair head half turned his way, with startled 
poise, a small gray figure seated on the hearth. 

Nothing misty nor naiad-like, here, but only 
a very earthly little girl ; to whom, however, Ken- 
dal straightway went up, and said — in English due 
to the fair hair : 

“ Water-witches don’t care for a fire ; so 
you’ll not mind my taking this from you, as 
I was not prepared for that plunge in the 
stream ? ” 

He had taken his stand on the hearth before 
her, leaning against the side of the wide chimney : 
a rather massive, dark-bearded man, twisting his 
riding- whip in a pair of vigorous, ungloved hands, 
and looking down on her with a twinkle in his 
deep-set gray eyes. 

Her color deepened ; she shifted her position, 
fronting him more directly, her elbows on her 


8 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


knees, her chin in her two little brown hands, her 
blue eyes sparkling defiance up at him. 

When that movement was all the answer he 
had — 

“Do you not understand ?” he said, this time 
in French. 

“ Oui, ’comprends,” she returned indifferently, 
settling herself into her old position. 

“What had I done, that you should give me 
no hint of the ford ? ” 

“What had you done, that I should give you 
any hint of it ? ” 

She said it with such directness, such certainty 
of unanswerableness in the cold, sweet voice, that 
Kendal rather stared at her, taken by surprise : 
as when one would touch a rose, and finds it 
tinted marble instead. 

How had she come by that fair little, sunny- 
haired face, the big childish blue eyes that ought 
to have had the sunshine in them too, but had 
only an unchildlike hardness instead ? Kendal 
had nothing to say, for an instant ; and then the 
pause was broken by the opening of an inner 
door. 

“Oh, but that is fine ! on a summer evening 
like this, to burn up all the wood my viert’ 
huomme Pacifique has cut for madame’s fire up- 
stairs ! ” 

The brisk old body on the threshold, her white- 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


9 


kerchiefed bosom swelling with indignation at the 
reckless extravagance of the fire, her crest of a 
white cap bristling, her sharp little face thrust 
forward, like an angry hen that finds her nest 
meddled with — had taken no note of the stranger. 
Until the girl said, with a careless shrug : 

“I have burned a beaute of your wood ; that 
is because you left me no candle. Use the one 
in your hand, tante Marguite, and see we have a 
visitor.” 

Tante Marguite came hastily forward, with a 
quick change of tone, a ring of relief in it. 

“Eh, it is monsieur the doctor ?” 

“ Yes, I am Dr. Kendal. I received your mes- 
sage—” 

She had turned to the girl : 

“Go, then, tell madame I am showing mon- 
sieur the doctor up.” 

The girl rose, as of habit, at the peremptory 
order ; but lingeringly, in a surprised way, with 
an evident desire to hear more. 

But not a word more was added, until the 
door had closed on her. 

Then : 

“Listen a little, monsieur,” the woman went 
on, in her provincial French, “I fear you will 
find madame failing fast. It is, however, true 
that she is near as young as me ” ; with a compla- 
cent drawing up of her own alert, round figure. 


10 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


“But as Pacifique (that is my mau, monsieur, 
that was gardener here, when there was anybody 
to see a garden !) tells me only yesterday, peonies 
and those common things are well more hardy 
than the dainty flowers one puts in the vase in 
the salon. But monsieur will come and judge 
for himself. ” 

Kendal was a little impatient to do so ; but 
she detained him to explain that le Bon Dieu had 
brought him to the neighborhood just in time. 
For if madame’s illness had been but two weeks 
earlier, while the old doctor was yet alive, and 
Dr. Kendal had not come down from Biviere du 
Loup to fill his place, what a misfortune ! For 
madame would not have sent for the old doctor, 
at any price ; not since he had taken upon him- 
self to speak to her about monsieur Jean, just 
after monsieur Francis turned his back once for 
all on the old home. And if monsieur the doc- 
tor is to do madame any good now, he will have 
the kindness to remember she has never spoken 
of the old story, nor heard those two names, for 
it’s many and many a year. 

“You need not fear,” Kendal interposed, 
good-naturedly. “The less, that I know noth- 
ing of the old story, and hear the names for the 
first time from your own lips.” 

Marguite looked rather crestfallen than re- 
lieved that gossip did not busy itself about the 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. \\ 

De Landremont house. But she was prompt to 
say, somewhat stiffly indeed : 

“ So much the better ; for there’s no getting 
anything out of a bag but what’s in it. This way, 
then, if monsieur pleases.” 

But Kendal could catch a murmur now and 
then, as she lighted him up-stairs : 

“ Truly ! and he in the village two whole 
weeks ! And to think all the world could forget 
that little history ! But, all the same, le Bon 
Dieu has brought him just in time, in place of 
the old one.” 

Kendal smiled rather grimly. If she thought 
the death of his predecessor providential, what 
would she think of that episode in Kendal’s own 
life, which had more or less remotely brought 
about his being here, in the stead of the medical 
adviser madame would not have sent for ? 

The sound of footsteps on the stairs must have 
announced them ; for as the two reached the land- 
ing, a door was opened by the girl, who flitted 
past without speaking, and they entered the 
room. 

Kendal’s expectations, on the basis of so much 
of the house as he had already seen, were at fault 
here. It was as if all that the other rooms had 
ever known of quaint and massive, in the way of 
old mahogany, had marshaled themselves about 
the mistress antiquated as they. In the light of 


12 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


the silver candelabrum on the stand at her elbow, 
she was glancing up at her visitor, out of a pinched 
white face ; all the more white and waxen for the 
startling contrast with the black silk kerchief tied 
three-corner-wise over her silvery hair. It gave 
her the look of a religieuse ; a look flatly contra- 
dicted by the quick, vivacious eyes — 

“ Coal coal black, and they’re like a hawk, 

And they winna let a body be,” 


said Kendal to himself, while she was welcoming 
him in French much older than herself : 

“Dr. Kendal, is it not ? I am charmed to 
see you ; though perhaps you may think my send- 
ing for you a mere trap to catch a visitor ? The 
truth is, my good Marguerite here — ” 

A smile of friendly understanding passed be- 
tween mistress and maid, as the latter softly with- 
drew from the room. 

“ My good Marguerite will have it that I am 
not quite strong this summer ; and so, as I am 
entirely dependent on her for companionship, I 
find it wisest not to dispute on the point of a 
needle, and am a little ill accordingly. ” 

Kendal looked at her in some doubt as to how 
much of the cheerful tone was real, how much 
assumed. To him, the first light touch of death 
was so apparent in the delicate, pinched features. 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


13 


that lie must think she had at least felt the ap- 
proach of the cold hand. He watched her with 
the interest we are wont to feel in one who is, we 
see, well-nigh face to face with the mysteries of 
that strange, hidden world. But to those keen 
old eyes there were no mysteries ; and not much 
of a world outside the four walls of this chamber 
of hers. 

“ I do not know to what will serve your pow- 
ders, Dr. Kendal,” she said to him, tapping with 
transparent hand certain tiny folded papers his 
saddle-bags had furnished forth, when nearly an 
hour later he had risen to go ; “ but I am sure 
your visit has been of benefit. You will always 
be the welcome monsieur, as often as you may 
spare an hour for an old woman — a septante who 
has been out of the world a good many years 
already. For me, I commence to believe,” she 
added, graciously, “l have been in error, since a 
long time, in so shutting all young companion- 
ship out of my life, that I forgot it could interest 
me — until you came.” 

Young companionship ! Kendal was smiling 
to himself over the words, as he went out. 

They had an odd sound in them, applied to 
himself. 

A man’s age is not always to be computed 
from the entry of his birth in the family Bible. 
It was now some years since Kendal had believed 


14 : 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


his youth as completely ended as if he were verging 
on the threescore years and ten of the old lady up- 
stairs. Yes, youth and he had parted company ; 
he did not know that he should desire a meeting 
again. It was well over ; he had no more wish 
to bring it back, with its feverish moods, than to 
risk having again the scarlet fever, or anything 
else incident to one’s early days. Perhaps if what 
he called his middle-age had been even as much 
as the precise middle of the allotted threescore 
years and ten ; or had brought with it any other 
physical sign than an added breadth of shoulder : 
in other words, if youth had passed so far away 
from him, as to be beyond glancing over her 
shoulder at him as she went — he might have 
reached out eagerly after the mere retreating 
shadow. As it was, he was conscious of a faint, 
pleasurable amusement at Mine, de Landremont’s 
odd mistake — a feeling which left him no time 
to wonder that, in speaking of young companion- 
ship, she should keep no note of the girl down- 
stairs. 

He was the more taken by surprise when, at 
an angle in the stairs, the girl stopped him, start- 
ing up suddenly from her seat on a lower step. 

“ Tell me, is she ill — my grandmother ? You 
are a doctor : tell me, will she — will she die ? ” 

“ Your grandmother ? ” He repeated the 
words almost incredulously. 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 15 

She never heeded. She stood in the moon- 
light slanting in at the window behind her, and 
lifted to him a pale, determined face that would 
not be trifled with. 

“Will she die?” 

The voice sank to a frightened whisper, ap- 
pealing to him as if he had only to open his lips 
and pronounce for death or reprieve. 

Perhaps she interpreted his grave smile too 
hopefully, as he said : 

“ She is not ill. Perhaps she may never be 
ill. She is old ; the sands are running low, the 
threescore years and ten are almost spent. I think 
yon will one day be glad, if you can brighten the 
brief while that is left ; can cheer with your com- 
panionship — ” 

“ My companionship — my companionship ! ” 

She broke in with a short, hard laugh ; so 
bitter, that involuntarily he drew a step nearer 
her. 

At that she recovered herself, with a haughty 
drawing up of the small figure, and looked him 
full in the face. “ You don’t know what you are 
talking about — ” she said, insolently ; and went 
by him like a flash. 

Kendal descended, feeling, as he told himself, 
rather more hot and angry than was worth while 
at a child’s impertinence — a child, a mere frac- 
tion of youth, which apparently did not count 


16 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


in the summing up of the inmates of the old 
house. 

And how soon would Death’s summons come, 
to lessen the number yet more ? The utmost 
Kendal could hope to do, would be to bar the 
door against it for a very little while. 


II. 


“ . . . the slow door 

That, opening, letting in, lets out no more.” 

The summons was nearer than Kendal knew. 

He had but paid two or three visits more, 
made welcome by the gracious old lady, but see- 
ing nothing of the girl, save a gray shadow van- 
ishing among the trees. 

When one midnight, came old Pacifique, 
hurrying with so urgent a message, that Dr. 
Kendal, as he threw himself into his saddle, 
feared Death on the Pale Horse would reach 
madame’s door before him. 

And so, indeed, it proved. 

When Kendal — better mounted than in Dob- 
bin’s day, and therefore easily distancing Paci- 
fique— had dismounted, and made his way across 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 17 

the littered yard to the house, he nearly stumbled 
oyer a small figure crouching on the door-step. 

So small a figure — so desolate out there in the 
dark, with head dropped on its knees — that it is 
no wonder the man was moved, as one is easily 
by a child’s trouble. And seeing that her sob- 
bing made her deaf to his approach, he gently 
laid his hand upon the drooping head. 

“ Come in with me — I will take you to her,” 
he said. 

He could feel the shudder that shook her from 
head to foot. She slipped from under his hand, 
and the next instant she was gone, beyond the 
angle of the house. 

This was no fitting time to give the wayward 
creature a thought more. Yet it may be ques- 
tioned whether Kendal did not, as he made his 
way up through the empty house, guided by the 
glimmer of a light placed on the landing. 

There was a farther glimmer across Mme. de 
Landremont’s threshold. Marguite must have 
been on the watch for him, for she opened to him 
at once, quietly as he came. 

The sharp old face was blurred with tears. 
But she did not speak until he had bent over the 
bed ; then reverently replaced the waxen hand 
crossed on the quiet breast. 

The woman moved to a window apart, and 
Kendal followed her ; both with the stealthy 
2 


18 


A LITTLE MAID OF AOADIE. 


tread which one falls into in the death -chamber : 
as if one feared disturbing that one sleeper whom 
no jarring sound can ever again trouble. 

“I suppose, from what your husband told me, 
it was too sudden to have sent for me earlier, ” 
said Kendal, speaking in a suppressed voice. 
“ Had it even been otherwise, I could hardly 
have done anything. It might be some relief to 
you, perhaps,” he added, after a pause, looking 
kindly at the old face with the painful tears of 
age upon it, “ if I were to take on me some of 
the arrangements now ? That is to say, if there 
is no proper friend within reach to do it, as ap- 
pears to be the case.” 

“ If monsieur would have the goodness ? See 
then, my old Pacifique, he does of the best which 
he knows ; but he’d be coming to ask me about 
everything ; which is what I could not bear, 
though mostly I do like it well,” she added, can- 
didly. “Now, monsieur would understand what 
is fitting. He bien, it is everything of the best, 
that is fitting. There is no need to stint the 
money ; she that is gone had enough and to 
spare, for all she chose to live here in this lone- 
some way, with just us two to care for her.” 

“And mademoiselle ?” put in Kendal, with a 
remembrance of the lonely little figure on the 
door-steps. 

“ Oui-da ! Mamselle Franjuaise ! ” 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


19 


There was a sort of contemptuous snort in the 
words — checked, however, by a glance toward 
the bed, where no unseemly sound could come to 
break that rest. 

Kendal, still thinking of the lonely child, was 
saying : 

“ And those who should be notified ? It ought 
to be done at once.” 

“ There is no one, monsieur. No one knows, 
these years and years, where monsieur Francis 
is ; and all the rest of her family have gone before 
her. All but Madame Jean’s ; if you call that 
her family ! Madame Jean is in Europe : better 
friends at a distance than enemies near, say I. It 
is my old man and me who will accompany her 
to the grave. And mamselle Fran^uaise, sup- 
pos — ” she added, as an after-thought. 

“ Mamselle Franguaise, of course. And this 
Madame Jean ?” 

“ Is her son’s widow, monsieur must under- 
stand. See a little, I will fetch monsieur her let- 
ter, which reached madame the day monsieur first 
came to see her. She bade me put it away here 
in the secretaire. ‘ It has directions enough for 
a daily correspondence, ma bonne Marguite,’ she 
said to me. ‘ The woman might know it imports 
me nothing, how she may run cackling over a 
whole continent, with her brood at her heels; 
one of them may pick up a prince’s feather some- 


20 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


where as they go, but it can import nothing to 
me.”’ 

She repeated her dead mistress’s speech, with 
evident satisfaction in it, before she added for 
herself : 

“ I’d be beholden to monsieur if he would 
have the goodness to write instead of me. For, 
the pen once in my hand, one good time for all, 
there’s things would get themselves written down 
on the paper — do I not know it, I who speak ? 
Figure to yourself, monsieur, it would be as much 
as my place is worth.” 

Kendal had opened the thin sheet of foreign 
paper she had given him, and was jotting down 
the address at the top of the page. 

“ Just Madame Jean, monsieur : her family is 
all. Except the neighbors. They came willingly 
enough to the old house, in the days when it was 
the best known of all around for gay doings ; 
may be they’ll not mind coming yet one time, if 
only to see the changes the long years have 
brought about. For it is years and years since 
monsieur Jean made that marriage that turned 
madame so bitter against him ; and reason good, 
too !” 

It was not just the moment to be interested in 
a match of years and years ago ; and though curi- 
osity, man to the contrary notwithstanding, is a 
not unmanly failing, Kendal did not pursue the 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


21 


subject. lie was folding up the letter, when Mar- 
guite stopped him. 

“ If it pleases monsieur to take it ? It is neces- 
sary to read it. There’s nothing in it that the 
whole village does not know — or did before they 
forgot,” she added, resentfully. “There’s more 
than one direction in it, see you, monsieur ; they’re 
running about so over yonder countries — one date 
for a letter to get to her at such a town, and an- 
other at another, tonne chance! ’Tis but little 
she need have put herself to the trouble to set 
them down for my poor mistress ; if she yet lived, 
’tis little of a letter Madame Jean need look for. 
But I suppose it’s proper now.” 

“ Most certainly.” Kendal was putting the 
letter into his pocket-book. “And about made- 
moiselle Franquaise ? This Madame Jean is her 
aunt ? ” 

“ Her aunt ! But that is just what she ought 
to have been — that is to say, monsieur Francis’s 
wife, since she was first promised to him, poor 
boy ! Ah, he’d never have gone wrong as he did, 
if she had not thrown him over for his brother! 
Faites excuse, monsieur ; Madame Jean is Mam- 
selle Franguaise’s mother.” 

Kendal felt a quick sense of relief, as if the lit- 
tle, impracticable thing had weighed more heavily 
on him than was needful. 

“ Her mother ? I am glad to hear that.” 


22 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


“ Are you so, monsieur ?” was old Marguite’s 
interpolation, with a toss of the head, like a 
charger snuffing the battle afar. 

“I found the child out on the door-step, cry- 
ing fit to break her heart,” he went on. “ Do not 
let her be too much alone. The young need a 
helping hand to ease the burden of their sorrow 
for them.” 

He missed the muttered “Ouais! Mamselle 
Franquaise will never break her heart under that 
burden ! ” 

For he had gone out, with that same hushed 
step, and a reverent farewell glance across at the 
upturned face on the pillow — the fair old face 
that he would see no more. 

For the girl, he saw nothing of her as he went 
down- stairs. 

Out of doors, the dubious gray dawn was confus- 
ing everything, until Kendal had almost reached 
his horse, when something moved beyond it. 

It was Franqoise, her head bowed down on the 
arm she had flung across the creature’s neck, in a 
sort of dumb appeal for the companionship of 
some living thing, in this first hour of her contact 
with death. 

But it must be some living thing which would 
leave her free from question or from scrutiny. 

For when she heard Kendal’s step, she started 
up and went past him, without speaking. 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


23 


III. 

u Life treads on life, and heart on heart — 

We press too close, in church or mart, 

To keep a dream or grave apart.” 

“ Mamselle FuANgoiSE, of course,” Kendal 
had repeated, when Marguifce was counting on her 
mistress’s followers to the grave. 

But she had somewhat miscounted, as it 
proved. 

The hour came when the funeral procession 
was to start for the village church, but Frangoise 
was nowhere to be found. 

So, after all, the two old servitors fell 'into 
place as chief mourners ; rightful place, as they 
both evidently thought it. 

There was plenty of honorable observance in 
the gathered throng of fideles ; but never a tear 
to fall on the heaped-up mold, save those few 
dropping slowly and bitterly from Marguite’s 
eyes, as she clutched the arm of her more phleg- 
matic spouse, with a pressure which even in her 
distress was intended to convey to him her sense 
that he was not doing his full duty to the occa- 
sion, by standing there dry-eyed. 

But when Kendal came by the churchyard 
again, in the early twilight, he was not surprised 
to find the girl sitting in the shadow of the great 
black cross which towered in the midst of the 


21 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


graves, its arms spanned by the white circle, em- 
blem of eternity. 

She was in her usual listless attitude, her el- 
bows in her lap, her chin propped in her two 
hands. She did not move, except to put up an 
impatient shoulder, when she heard the stir of 
some one coming to her through the long grass ; 
and she said petulantly, and without looking 
round : 

“ You needn’t mind me, tante Marguite. I’m 
not going home yet — I don’t want any supper.” 

There was a strained sound in the voice ; and 
Kendal caught the gleam of tears in the eyes 
which persistently, as if to hold back the drops 
from falling, fixed themselves upon the wooded 
line of the horizon. He saw her start as if she 
knew him without looking directly at him, and 
he said, gently : 

“ You must not send me away quite at once. I 
have ridden far to have a moment’s talk with you.” 

“ Ah, qa ! I know what you are going to say 1 ” 
Again she put up her shoulder, with that same 
impatient gesture. “It is hardly worth the pain, 
however. I have my suffisance of it ; tante Mar- 
guite has been preaching at me in good time, 
from the same text. Two heads in one cap, you 
two, monsieur ; but, all the two, you will never 
make me sorry that I stole away and hid myself 
this morning, instead of joining in the triumphal 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


25 


procession to lay her away in the grave. As if, 
even if she knew, she would care that I— that / 
was near her ! ” 

It was rather a gasp than a sob, which broke 
the voice. And then she turned on him, in a sort 
of breathless defiance of her own emotion. 

But he only took his seat quietly on the slop- 
ing ground at her feet, half-averted from her, and 
letting his gaze rest, as had hers, on the new mound 
a stone’s-throw off. It was already marked, as 
the majority of those around, with a cross about 
two feet high, neatly covered with black muslin 
stitched over it ; on which was also stitched, in 
letters of white tape : 

I 

H S 
c 
i 

' ■ " cigit ■ 

Yenerente de Landrcmont 


a 

8 

e 

e 


7 1 . 

R. I. P. 


26 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


Kendal glanced at the girl’s face, from the 
cross ; and he easily guessed who had planted it 
there. 

But he made no comment. 

The moon was beginning to glimmer silvery 
through the gray dusk ; the woodland stir came 
to them like a sigh. Kendal left time enough for 
the calm to quiet her, before he spoke ; even 
then, rather to himself than to her : 

“I have often thought the greatest marvel of 
the other world is the different view of this one, 
which must flash upon our suddenly clear-seeing 
eyes. To behold the things we have cared most 
for in our daily life, the little comforts and habits, 
dwindled to a mere speck of valley-dust blown off 
from us upon our heights ; and the love, the very 
vital air we breathe, the one thing that mounts 
with us — ” 

She put up her hand hurriedly to stop 
him. 

“ I understand you; you suppose it would 
comfort me to believe that grandmamma, though 
here she never thought about my love, would set 
great price on it there. But you are mistaken 
from beginning to end. I never loved grand- 
mamma. ” 

She said it in a bitterly shamed way, sinking 
her head as if humiliated by the confession. But 
she spoke it out bravely, as repelling the dishon- 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACAD IE. 


27 


esty of claiming credit for something she did not 
deserve. 

Kendal heard her in surprise. 

And her agony of suspense on the night of his 
first visit, when she stopped him on the stairs ; 
her sobs out in the night of death ; her hopeless 
attitude just now ? 

“I suppose you have felt it hard to be kept 
here, away from your own mother,” he said in the 
pause, half involuntarily, trying to solve the prob- 
lem for himself. 

Down went the fair head, lower yet. 

“ Nor my mother, either. Why should you 
trouble about me, Dr. Kendal ? I am not worth 
your while. I am not a good girl. As tante 
Marguite says, I have the chceur dur. I don’t 
love any one at all.” 

“ Poor child ! poor little Franyoise ! ” 

She lifted her head from her hands and looked 
at him. 

He was not looking at her, as he sat there at 
her feet ; his dark, strongly marked face in pro- 
file, his eyes again on the horizon-line. 

There was nothing to startle the girl in such 
words from him. She would never have made 
that mistake of the grandmother’s about his 
young companionship. 

She watched him a moment in silence ; and 
then — 


28 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


“I think you must be like Upcle Frank,” she 
said, wistfully. “ Not in face — I don’t mean 
that — he was blond, like me. That is why they 
gave me his name, because we were so much 
alike.” 

“ His name ? ” 

Her glance had wandered again, absently fol- 
lowing the breeze as it freshened in the waves of 
grass, and here and there flung out the spray of 
daisies or foam-drift of immortelles. 

Turned aside so, she missed the sudden keen 
and searching look which, without changing 
his position, Kendal had fixed on her as she 
answered : 

“Mais oui, his name. Fran£oise was as near 
as they could give a girl, of course ; but then I 
was always called Frank, as a little one in the 
family.” 

“ Madame Jean’s family?” Kendal said, in- 
voluntarily quoting tante Marguite. 

The girl colored a little. 

“ But yes, certainly. We were living in Liv- 
erpool then ; we spoke the English altogether 
there ; that is not to say I have not forgotten 
much since then. My uncle Franpois w r as 
Frank — ” 

The searching look intensified, as if Kendal 
were seeking something in the unconscious face 
which had not struck him before — something 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 29 

which he was by no means sure he had found 
even now. And yet — 

“ Frank Latour ? n he said, with a questioning 
inflection. 

“No, but De Landremont, monsieur under- 
stands. Eh, then, I had almost forgotten ; it is 
Francis La Tour de Landremont, for a daughter 
of La Tour was wife to a De Landremont in the 
early days of Acadie. But my uncle Francis 
was just Frank with us in England ; and I was 
Frank. I can just remember ; and how Marie 
would always call me so — and papa. Mamma 
never did ; she — ” 

There she checked herself abruptly. She 
glanced at Kendal with hurried inquiry in her 
eyes. How much had she said ? — too much ? 

But the utter absence of curiosity in his face 
and attitude reassured her. 

She did not perceive that he was listening 
with an intentness deeper than mere curiosity, 
and that might have suggested a stronger interest 
in this Frank Latour — de Landremont — than an 
unfamiliar name awakens. 

No one could tell the relief it was to her to 
speak. The strange hush she had been kept in 
for days was appalling to her. There was some- 
thing comforting in going back into the past, 
with some one who would see nothing more in it 
than she had while she lived it. Afterward, 


30 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


tante Marguite had let fall enough to her to take 
all the pleasure out of it. To tante Marguite she 
could never have made any reference to it again. 
But it was different with Kendal, who would not 
see anything but the obvious outside. 

So she went on : 

“ I can just remember the time before I came 
here ; the big house outside of Liverpool, with its 
great gardens ; and the holiday journeyings now 
and then to strange foreign places. For papa 
never returned here after his marriage. And 
when he had made, oh, quantite in money, by lum- 
ber and ship-building, first in St. John, and then 
in Liverpool, he would take us traveling. That is 
not the way the sons do here, you know,” she 
said, more gravely, as if confessing to heterodox 
proceedings. “ They settle auror de leurs peres, 
with here a strip and there a strip cut off the 
home-farm, and a little house built on it as each 
marries. There was a little house built on the 
other end of the farm here, for TJncle Frank — ” 

She broke off hastily. 

“ Only, he did not marry. But those old days 
— those journeyings — it is all a dream, but a dream 
one likes to think of, when one wakes.” 

“ One should have more years than yours, to 
care to dream of the past,” Kendal said, hastily. 
“ At your age — ” 

“ I was nearly nine years old. Of course, it 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


31 


is not clear to me. It is just a strange jumble of 
moving pictures, in which I somehow lose my- 
self.” 

“ And you like to lose yourself ? ” 

“ But yes ; why not ? ” 

He turned toward her more directly, leaning 
his elbow on the bank above him, searching her 
face as he asked : 

“You would like to go back to those old 
countries, to spend some time there — this autumn 
and winter, for instance — with your mother and 
sisters ? ” 

The child’s face kindled when he began ; but 
when he came to those last words its light fell, 
and she only answered : 

“Ho.” 

“You do not wish to go ?” 

“ I will not go.” 

Then, hurriedly, in a startled way : “ Why do 
you ask me that, monsieur ? I may stay here, is 
it not so ? I may stay on here with tante Mar- 
guite and bonhomme Pacifique ? ” 

“ So Marguite says. She tells me she is sure 
your mother will let you choose for yourself, and 
that your grandmother insisted on the freedom of 
your choice, in the last charges she left. Frank ” 
— he said to her, suddenly, with a change of tone 
from the matter-of-fact one of a moment before 
— “ my dear little girl, you are so young, and you 


32 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


have no friend near you to advise you. Will you 
be offended if I speak out plainly what I am 
thinking ? As if — as if I were the Uncle Frank 
you have told me I must resemble. Then you will 
be sure I am not speaking carelessly, when I say I 
fear you are making a mistake. Your mother 
and sisters should be more to you than a crabbed 
old woman who is, after all, not too good to 
you.” 

“ And they ?” 

The words came with emphasis. Kendal’s 
face changed, and the girl saw it and said, with a 
brusque little laugh : 

“ You see I was right when I told you once 
before, you do not know what you are talking 
about. ” 

“ About a girl’s own mother and sisters,” was 
the quiet answer. 

“Ah, yes. And it goes without saying that 
my mother loved me much, and that is why she 
sent me away to grandmamma, who loved me 
also, without doubt. As to mesdemoiselles mes 
sceurs, Marie was always away at school, until 
the last two or three years; and Ars&ne was the 
next ; and Melerente and Anne, they were bes- 
seonnes.” 

“ Besseonnes ? ” 

“Eh, what do you call the same day born — 
they had each other— why should they trouble 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 33 

about me ? And a child of my age was in my 
mother’s way, tante Marguite says.” 

“And your father ?” 

The question escaped Kendal, and in the very 
utterance he regretted it. But not when he saw 
the light that dawned in her face. 

“ My father — ” 

She said the words over, dwelling on them 
with a softness in her voice, of which he had not 
thought it capable. “Ah, yes, my father loved 
me ! ” 

The blue eyes widened, deepened ; like the 
skies they matched, they grew large with a happy 
brooding. 

And then, with a little stir, she roused herself 
out of her dream. 

“Although, of course, he did not like to have 
me with him, Marguite says.” 

“ Of course he did not like to have you with 
him?” 

“For I was too much like Uncle Frank.” 
And then again she broke oft' in a startled way : 
“You know!” she cried, breathlessly; “you 
know ! ” 

She had not supposed it (for why, indeed, 
should a stranger know anything of what had 
come to pass so long ago ?) ; but something in Dr. 
Kendal’s face now startled her with the misgiv- 
ing. 


3 


34 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


He answered her reluctantly : 

“A little. Some idle chatter in the village 
to-day supplemented a few words which old Mar- 
guite let fall.” 

She drew her breath hard. 

“ It was she who told me too, one day when I 
had made her very angry.” 

“She is a cruel old woman,” Kendal said, 
indignantly. 

“Poor old tante Marguite, she did not mean 
to be cruel ! I think she was sorry the moment 
she had spoken ; for she would cover my bread 
with marmalade for frippe at breakfast, an entire 
week after. Fancy ! When I just hate marma- 
lade. She thought I must like it because it was 
English ! ” 

What a child she was still ! Kendal smiled 
too, as he said : 

“We ought to be friends, on Sydney Smith’s 
rule of friendship, for I hate marmalade, too. 
But you didn’t eat that bread the whole week, I 
suppose ? ” 

“Oh, but of course I did. You know I 
couldn’t let poor tante Marguite think I was still 
angry with her, when I had behaved very ill to 
her too. And tante Marguite has sometimes 
tried very hard to like me a little. Dr. Ken- 
dal—” 

“ She must have had to try very hard indeed,” 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 35 

said Kendal, smiling into the fair little, earnest 
face. 

“ — because I resemble her monsieur Fran- 
cis. ” 

“Some people have a knack of seeing like- 
nesses,” Kendal put in, rather staring at her. 
“And your grandmamma ?” 

“Eh, c’est $a — papa fancied when he sent me 
to her I would comfort her for Uncle Frank ; but 
from the first she could never bear to look at 
me — ” 

She broke off in a troubled way. 

“ I would never have said anything — I would 
never have told you anything — but that you knew 
already from tante Marguite. You are sure of 
that, monsieur ? ” 

He laughed — just a little shortly. 

“I am sure of anything you say, even when 
you are at the pains to show me you hold me otf, 
like any other stranger, from all that concerns 
you. I ought to apologize for so much as think- 
ing of interfering — ” 

He was taken by surprise when she leaned for- 
ward, looking at him with eyes suddenly suf- 
fused. 

“ You may say anything you wish to me,” Hr. 
Kendal.” 

“Finish it, Frank. ‘ For you are my friend, 
and I will trust you, even if you don’t say any- 


36 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


thing of what is in your mind to bring about for 
me. And if the clew fail — ’ ” 

He broke short off there, as if in truth he had 
said more than he intended, of what was in his 
mind, 

Frank Latour-^de Landremont ? — the clew 
ought not to fail. One must be able to trace it 
out at last, although it may take time and trouble. 
But little Frangoise had best not know, until 
there is something more than mere conjecture 
or coincidence. Until then, let the past be 
past. 

He turned his back on it, with an impatient 
movement of his shoulders, as if there were little 
in it he would care to face again. 

Frank’s face was a pleasanter study, with its 
puzzled little frown. 

For the speech he had dictated to her was per- 
plexing : he had put it all into English, while she 
was accustomed to eke hers out with a bit of 
patois here and there. And she was not at all 
sure of the meaning of that word “clew.” 

But she tackled the whole boldly ; and even 
repeated again at the close, quite softly : 

‘ ‘ For you are my friend-—*” then added some- 
thing of her own : 

“ For you have been kinder to me than ever 
any one was, since I was so high,” measuring off, 
with a wave of her hand above the tall grass, a 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


37 


height rather fitted to a fairy than to the forlorn 
little maid of eight or nine years who had been 
sent here into exile. “ I must have seemed un- 
grateful to you/’ she went on, shyly ; “ I had not 
been used to very much kindness — I did not un- 
derstand it.” 

“ Are you sure you understand yourself ? For 
instance, my little mamselle Frank, you have 
spoken of yourself as cold-hearted and unloving ; 
yet I have seen you in a passion of grief for one 
who was certainly not everything she might have 
been to you.” 

She edged nearer to him in the moonlight, 
with an awed look in her eyes. 

“ I am afraid of death. And papa died. 
And if grandmamma should meet him at once, 
and tell him I have never been of the least com- 
fort to her, as he sent me to be ? ” 

“ But, petite, that is morbid. Was it fault 
of yours that your fair little face brought memo- 
ries too sad for her to bear ? We are not all of 
us like you, child ; some of us will not face 
the past, but run away from it, even though 
we know the ghost has little to upbraid us 
for.” 

His tone might, to an older ear, have inter- 
preted the “ we ” as something more than a mere 
form of speech. But she was just now too self- 
absorbed, in a child’s selfishness, to heed. 


38 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


“Then you do not think I am to blame?” 
she said, eagerly. “ I would have loved her dearly 
if she had let me.” 

“I am sure of it. And, Frank, when your 
mother — ” 

But the softness was all gone out of her voice. 
“That is different.” 

“I am aware of that,” he said, quietly. 
“ Every one is different from a mother.” 

“But you do not understand. It was she who 
made my father untrue to Uncle Frank ; it was 
she—” 

She checked the passionate outburst, covering 
her face, as Kendal broke in quietly : 

“ Your mother.” 

“Yes, my mother ?” 

The calm of those three words was unchild- 
like enough. But, as if she were a 6hild, he put 
his hand on the two which she let fall together ; 
covering them with a firm pressure. 

“ Wait,” he said. “Even were it for you, as 
her child, to sit in judgment on her, still, you 
would not judge unjustly ? Kecollect, you know 
but what old Marguite has told you ; a witness 
the most prejudiced — ” 

She shook his hand from her, as she started 
to her feet. 

“I have heard too much already !” she cried, 
passionately. “ What ! you would have me be- 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


39 


lieve my father something worse than Marguite 
has taught me ; not the dupe of a false woman, 
but a traitor !” 

She flung from him, with that last word ; and 
Kendal, if he had had any answer to it, could 
not have spoken it ; for, swiftly as she had flitted 
out of his ken on that first evening when 
he saw her, she passed from him now, the low 
firs snatching her from sight, down the hill- 
side. 

Kendal could see nothing better than just to 
mount and ride away. 

So, then, what had been gained by this at- 
tempt with a legion of arguments to bring this 
little savage to terms ? 


“ * The King of France, with twenty thousand men, 

Marched up a hill, and then marched down again,’ ” 

Kendal said to himself rather scornfully ; and 
turned his horse’s head for home. 


40 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


IV. 


“ . . . the one maid for me.” 

“ Deare Dr. Kendal : 

“ Tanle Marguite has been some days impairing. Her sick- 
nesse is not extream at p’scnt, but she wolde be much satisfy’d 
if you came to visite her. 

“ This, by the hands of Jean Michaud, who passes to the 
village — from yours to co’mand, 

“ Your friend, Frank. 

“ Postscriptum. — Are you well angry with me, Dr. Kendal ? 
I may have deserv’d it — but I hope you believe I speake my 
very soule to you, when I say I am sorry.” 


It was this curious epistle which reached Ken- 
dal one day, some three weeks after the great De 
Landremont funeral. An ambitious reaching out, 
on the child’s part, after her half-lost English, he 
divined ; but where did she get her quaint style ? 
Not, certainly, from her youthful recollections. 
It should have been written, not in the French 
character, but in the square and upright one which 
belongs to the days before the long S had gone 
out of print, and which one now sees only in 
brown ink on the yellowed pages of one’s family 
letters of more than a century ago. 

Kendal was thinking this, and smiling over it, 
as he let the bridle fall on his horse’s neck ; when 
there was a rustle in the long grass by the road- 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


41 


side, and, as he glanced up, his eyes met Frank’s. 
But why should he have colored crimson, and 
thrust the letter into his breast, before he spoke 
to her ? 

He dismounted, and walked beside her in the 
tangled road ; and she looked up at him with a 
flushed face for an instant without speaking. 
Then she said, shyly, in French, as usual : 

“Tell me a little, monsieur : you were laugh- 
ing at my letter ? And I did give myself much 
pains with it ! But it is the first I ever wrote ; 
and I am afraid I don’t know how. Would you 
mind telling me what is wrong in it ?” 

He did not say he thought it quite the pret- 
tiest letter he had ever read, especially the post- 
scriptum. He only asked : 

“Will you tell me first who taught you to 
write English ? ” 

“ Oh, is it so bad as that ? ” she cried, flush- 
ing again with mortification. “I thought I had 
gotten almost every word right, from some great 
books which Uncle Frank left here — he had 
studied the English at the Fredericton schools, 
you see. And I wanted to remember it. But I 
don’t know that I like to study very much,” she 
added, apologetically, “unless I can carry the 
book out of doors somewhere — and they are most 
of them too heavy for that.” 

“Will you let me lend you some that are 


42 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


lighter every way ? And will you show me those 
you have which you like most ? ” 

“ Oh, yes, I should be glad to do that ! ” she 
said. “ There is the ‘ Faerie Queen ’ — I think 
that is the best of all. And the < Household of 
Sir Thomas More ’ — ” 

“ But that is not an old book.” 

“ Isn’t it ? ” — puzzled. “ Grandmamma said 
it was, though. That was one day long ago, 
when she would still sometimes leave her room — 
once in a long while, you know — and come out 
to pace up and down, up and down, the path 
between where the flower-beds used to be. It 
was in going down, that she passed the open door 
of the lumber-room, and saw me in there, read- 
ing. It was an old book, half torn ; somebody’s 
Diary, I remember, and stupid enough, it told 
so much about his new coats and velvet tunics. 
I was not sorry when grandmamma took it away, 
and told me to read that ‘ Household of Sir Thomas 
More ’ instead — since I had a fancy for old books, 
she said. But what I did not like as well, was 
that she came into the lumber-room first, and 
looked over all the books, and made Marguite 
carry off the most to light the fires with. I 
never guessed before that grandmamma knew 
English.” 

“I am afraid your grandmamma was not a 
very liberal censor of the press,” said Kendal, 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


43 


smiling. “ Never mind, you’ll let me bring you 
what you are to read. And, Frank — ” he added 
this with some hesitation, “ there is the long 
winter before you and me, and we neither of us 
have many friends. Suppose I were to ride down 
once or twice a week, and bring you books, and 
see what you had read, and — maybe help you a 
little in it ? ” 

“ Oh, but would you really not think it too 
much trouble ?” She turned toward him in her 
eagerness, her face alight. “ You see, the winter 
is so slow ! it never passes. I’m afraid I am not 
very fond of books ; but then anything is better 
than the chimney-corner with only tante Mar- 
guite to speak to. And this is what I have to 
put up with, half the winter-time ; for we never 
have any but the one fire in the kitchen (grand- 
mamma’s up-stairs didn’t count, you know) be- 
cause Pacifique has all the wood to cut, and he 
always grumbles if too much is burned down- 
stairs. And if there were any one else but those 
two to come in sometimes ! You see, in winter 
one can not be out of doors the whole day long. 
And so, to read — or even to study — that is not so 
b6te, the idea.” 

It was not a very flattering reception of his 
offer, though assuredly a frank one. 

But Kendal had made the offer with the de- 
sire to be of service, and he had had experience 


44 a LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 

enough to know that services are wont to he ac- 
cepted more readily than gratefully. 

Fran9oise’s English was certainly as antiquated 
as the French spoken in the district. But it ap- 
peared to Kendal no heavy task to carry her for- 
ward into modern times. 

The winter was not spent, before he had ad- 
vanced with her as far as Tennyson. 

The evening he brought “ Enid the Fair” to 
introduce her to, began like many another in the 
old farm-kitclien. Just now Kendal’s voice had 
paused a moment in his reading ; for on the other 
side of the wide room, at either end of the spread 
supper- table, stood the old husband and wife, 
with reverently bowed heads, reciting in antipho- 
ny a sort of litany of grace before meat. The 
logs piled up in the wide hearth sent red lights 
flickering about the walls and shining floor ; the 
high old-fashioned dressers with their rows of 
burnished tins ; the spinning-wheel in its chim- 
ney-corner ; and the two standing figures — Mar- 
guite with her sharp features shaded by the white 
cap she wore as her mother had before her ; and 
solemn Pacifique in his new lumberman’s dress, 
in which he will go off to-morrow to the woods, 
resplendent in blue flannel shirt, with gay silk 
handkerchief knotted about the throat, and 
breast-plate of red flannel embroidered with a 
gayly-plumaged cock. 


A. LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


45 


All things come to an end, the long grace with 
the rest. Pacifique had caught up his shining 
pewter-mug, making the sign of the cross with a 
sweep of his arm before he drank ; the two old 
people were sitting down to their evening meal, 
and the girl was saying : 

“ Go on — go on ! ” impatient of her .reader’s 
pause. 

Kendal glanced across at her, from under the 
shade of his hand that kept the direct rays of the 
flickering lamp from his eyes. She was sitting 
opposite to him at the small table, her arms upon 
it, her face framed in her two hands, her eyes 
fixed in breathless listening on his face. Why in 
the world did he pause so long ? And why, when 
he resumed, did he turn the page back, not for- 
ward : 

“ . . . Entering then 

Right o’er a mount of newly fallen stones, 

The dusky-raftered, many-cobwebbed hall, 

He found an ancient dame— 

And near her, like a blossom vermeil-white 
That lightly breaks a faded flower-sheath, 

— Here, by God’s rood, is the one maid for me !” 

“ Why do you stop ?” cried Franchise again, 
“and go backward? and why — eh, you have 
left otft something this time ! ” 

Kendal pushed the book from him ; he said, 
in an altered tone, half lightly : 


46 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


“ Frank, the old place will soon be changing, 
Dame Marguite tells me. When the leaves come 
out, ‘ the dusky-raftered hall ’ will be coming out 
too in new colors and freshness. The quaint old 
paneled doors are to know paint again, and the 
long, sloping roofs to renew their coat of white- 
wash. Pacifique’s hoe is to be down on the bram- 
ble-roses, and the sedge-grass that has blotted out 
the garden-beds ; and the first boat that can come 
up the river to the foot of the falls is to bring 
what my neighbor, old Niel MacNiel, would call 
‘ braw new inside plenishing,’ up from Frederic- 
ton. And then everything will be ready for 
Madame Jean and her household to come like the 
summer birds over the sea. And about the old 
place there will gather a life and brightness such 
as you can never remember here — ” 

“ What will it be like ? ” she broke in, eagerly. 
She was looking at him with a wondering ex- 
pectancy. “ What will it he like ? ” 

“ Like the old times, perhaps. Has Marguite 
never told you of them ? ” 

There was a chill of disappointment in his 
tone, at her eagerness ; but as he answered her 
promptly enough, she did not observe it. 

“ Marguite ? She never tells me anything.” 

“ Perhaps I know, then, better than the lady 
of the manor. I have heard it mentioned in the 
village how gay the old house was a score or so of 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


47 


years ago ; how there were lines of carriages from 
much farther down the river than Tobique-way ; 
even garrison -parties from as far as Fredericton ; 
and music and dancing, such as the old walls and 
floors would tremble at now.” 

The girl was trembling, in a quiver of excite- 
ment. 

“ 0 Dr. Kendal ! will it be so again ?” 

“ What should prevent it ? ” Not the poor old 
lady’s death, he said to himself, rather grimly. 
The family were letting time enough elapse be- 
fore coming to take posession ; and surely they 
could do so then with the proper festivities, after 
these months of mourning conceded to the old 
house. “Le roi est mort — vive le roi,” is the same 
all the world over. And Franqoise— for why, in- 
deed, should the girl mourn ? — Franqoise sitting 
over there now in her shabby gray gown — 

. a blossom vermeil-white, 

That lightly breaks a faded flower-sheath,” 

would blossom out, like Enid, in all her spring- 
time bravery, and quite forget this gloomy winter. 

He was the more taken by surprise when the 
April face suddenly clouded over. She pushed 
back her chair with a sharp movement. 

“Me, I shall run away to tante Marguite. 
You know that, when they come, she means to 
withdraw herself to the little cottage at the other 


48 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


end of the farm, which grandmamma left her. 
Me, I hate change ; I should miss the old free 
life — and grandmamma.” 

It was almost the only time the name had 
crossed her lips since that evening after the fu- 
neral, when it had broken from her in a storm of 
vehement, half-angry tears. 

She spoke it now in a low, reverent way which 
showed that the bitterness of the past was past. 
It was Kendal’s tone which had the bitterness in 
it now. 

“And me, Frank?” he said. “And me? 
Ah, child, may you always be so honest with me : 
even when it is to show me I am nothing to you 
— not even to be missed.” 

“Missed?” There was anxiety enough in 
her eyes, in her voice, to acquit her of in- 
difference. “You are not going away, mon- 
sieur le doctor ? You are not going to leave 
me alone ? ” 

He answered her with an odd sort of smile, 
and a question of his own : 

“It is you who are going, not I. How far, 
in that gay new life of yours, from the village doc- 
tor with his traveling pharmacy of saddle-bags ? 
Little Frank, as yet you do not know enough of 
the world to answer me that ; but you soon will 
learn.” 

“I shall never learn — never, if, by my learn- 


A LITTLE MAID OP ACADIE. 


49 


ing the world, you mean forgetting my best 
friends.” 

She reached her hand out to him, across the 
table. What could the man do, but seize it 
with an eager violence that almost crushed the 
small fingers ? And then (old Pacifique had 
pushed away his chair and was turning to the 
door, and Marguite was busied at the dresser, 
with her back to them) Kendal stooped and 
brushed those fingers with his bearded lips. 

“ Frank, if you would let me be your best and 
closest friend, indeed : if I could teach you to trust 
yourself to me ! ” 

He spoke so quietly, there was nothing to 
startle her, so she said : 

“ But I have learned that already.” 

Kendal did not so much as raise his head 
and look at her. It was as though he feared 
to break, with slightest movement, the spell of 
some dream too blessed to tarry out of para- 
dise. Hid the girl’s own clear and steady voice 
break it, when, with that briefest pause, she 
went on : 

“ When one has been so very kind as you have 
been to me, that is a lesson which surely needs 
no teaching.” 

At that he raised his head, still keeping her 
hand, but in a quiet clasp. His face was quiet, 
and a little paler than before. 

4 


50 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


“ Lessons, Frank — I have given you a few of 
these, indeed — tiresome things — 55 

“ Oh, but indeed, indeed it was good of you ! 55 
she cried ; not denying his qualifieative, however. 
“For what should I do without them — I who 
knew nothing, just nothing at all ? I should have 
been ten times as much afraid of mamma and 
Marie and the others . 55 

“ — And while I have been giving these , 55 he 
went on, taking up again the thread of his speech, 
and not caring to break it off with any discourag- 
ing hint of the difference between his method of 
instruction and that of the fashionable masters 
her sisters had no doubt had — .“ and while I have 
been giving these, did you never once think what 
you have been teaching me ? 53 

“/ — teaching you ? 55 

He answered her with a slight smile of mock- 
ery at himself, as he let her hand go. 

“Any boy of twenty might have told me I 
was a fool for my pains. But so it was ; I learned 
the lesson by heart, though you gave it without 
meaning that I should. Were I a boy of twenty 
again, I might hope to unlearn it ; but not now. 
Frank, can you tell me what it is ? 55 

He was leaning toward her, when tante Mar- 
guite 5 s heavy tread shook the floor, and she drew 
out her spinning-wheel at the other side of the 
hearth. 


A LITTLE MAID OF AC A DIE. 


51 


Sitting over against the low flax-wheel, she 
was expert enough to he able to divide her atten- 
tion between her shining thread that, as she drew 
it out, caught here and there a gleam of the leap- 
ing firelight, and the thread of the conversation 
opposite, which certainly was not running smooth- 
ly nor brightly at this moment. 

But the man could not stop now ; the suspense 
of waiting till a more convenient season would 
have been unbearable. 

He went on, trusting his glance to be his in- 
terpreter : 

“Will you try to repeat the lesson after me ? 
‘ I love you.’ If you could ever learn it — ” 

Just those words, “I love you,” in the Eng- 
lish, which tante Marguite would not understand : 
the rest in French. 

And in French Frangoise was answering him, 
except just those three English words : 

“ ‘ I love you.’” She said it blushing, laugh- 
ing a shy little laugh. “ It is quite easy, indeed, 
Hr. Kendal— and I don’t mean to forget it— 
though I am not twenty ! ” 

At those last words, his face clouded over. 
Not twenty; a mere child. What right had he 
to bind her so ? When, perhaps, if she knew 
all — 

The past had seemed so utterly past and gone 
to him that he had turned his back upon it, even 


52 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


in liis thoughts. But now he must look at the 
dead thing once more ; must even show it to 
Franqoise. 

“ Frank, ” he said, hurriedly, “Frank, I have 
a story to tell you — •” 

There he became conscious of Marguite’s sharp 
eyes observing him. 

True, she could not understand his words ; 
but no one could be with tante Marguite without 
feeling sure that she heard and felt, as well as 
saw, with those black-beaded eyes of hers. 

Frank looked up, as he stopped ; and she 
clasped her hands half-gleefully, half-teasingly : 

“A story ? A little history ? Ah, yes, let us 
have it. Me, I know none but tante Marguite’s, 
about the Christmas-eve Cattle and the Birds of 
St. Luc.” 

“ The Birds of St. Luc ?” 

“ The oxen, they are, you know. And once 
there was an old man — ” 

What she said was, “An fors y ’vet an viert 
lmomme.” But by this time Kendal was suffi- 
ciently familiar with the dialect to follow easily 
enough the ancient Breton legend of the master 
who fell asleep one Christmas-eve in the manger, 
under the nose of his oxen, and was awakened 
after midnight by their talking together in good 
Christian speech. Every one knows (and it evi- 
dently has not occurred to Frangoise to dispute it 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


53 


seriously, though she does glance askance at Ken- 
dal to see how he is taking it) that the cattle 
are thus privileged this once a year, in memory 
of the Child who shared their manger on the first 
Christmas. “ We are going to bury our master to- 
morrow, demoin,” said they. And, sure enough ! 
The master when he heard them, resolved to keep 
out of danger by not going to church on Christ- 
mas-day, as there was a troublesome ford to cross 
upon the road. Instead, he went to the forest, 
and spent the holy-day in wood-cutting. Toward 
evening he was coming home with a “ grus out - 
arge ” of wood, and had reached the cross-road 
to the church, when his oxen began to back wildly 
away from it, with their unholy load. The old 
man was very frightened, until he bethought 
himself to stop them by laying two logs athwart 
the load, in the form of a cross. That did stop 
them, of course ; but so suddenly, and with such 
a jar, that the master was thrown heavily forward 
to the ground, and the solid wooden wheels went 
over him. So the oxen did bury him, after all, 
scraping a hole under the dead leaves with their 
hoofs. 

“ He was a very wicked man ; he did not say 
his penitence,” Franqoise wound up, nodding sig- 
nificantly at Kendal. “ Tante Marguite can tell 
you what comes of that, and how sometimes a 
great frog will leap up in the woods and fasten on 


54: A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 

one’s nose for punishment, until the penitence be 
duly said.” 

She put up her hand, laughing, to her own 
straight little nose. “ Me, I am not of the faith- 
ful,” she added, more seriously. 

Tante Marguite looked suspicious of the Eng- 
lish words. She must have divined their meaning. 

“ It is all Madame Jean’s fault,” she said, 
shaking her head, gloomily — “all Madame Jean’s 
fault ! She led Monsieur Jean astray out of the 
faith ; and my dear madame here, she would never 
meddle with the child. f Blood can not lie,’ the 
dear madame would say, thinking of Madame Jean. 
But, passe ! ” 

Marguite put the subject from her with that 
meaning shrug, and set her spinning-wheel in 
motion again with the hand that had stayed it to 
deliver this thrust. 

That the girl felt it, the sudden angry sparkle 
of tears in her blue eyes showed ; but when Ken- 
dal would have spoken for her, she stopped him 
with a laugh — a little forced, perhaps, but reso- 
lutely careless. 

“As tante Marguite says, passe ! Monsieur is 
not my breastplate, to receive these thrusts for 
me.” 

“If I might be!” he said, eagerly. “If I 
could but teach you — ” 

This time, the laugh with which she inter- 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


55 


rupted him was merry enough. Her girlish in- 
stinct would have kept her silent had the two 
been alone together ; but she was safe under Mar- 
gate’s eyes. 

“ You see, monsieur le docteur,” she said in 
French, shaking her pretty head at him, “you 
must not be always for giving lessons ; and you 
must take care what you teach me. I’m not so 
very dull at learning, and Ido not forget. So, if 
there are any mistakes made, it is quite 3 r our 
fault.” 

“ Mercy of my life ! ” Even Kendal, through 
all his grave burden of thought, could not for- 
bear a smile at the shocked tone, and the way in 
which Marguite resumed her spinning, with a 
vicious push to the wheel. “It is just a wonder 
to me how monsieur le docteur has ever had the 
patience to bear with mamselle, lesson after les- 
son, and she with no more gratitude than that. 
You are going, monsieur ? But I don’t wonder, 
and mamselle idling as if she were possessed by 
the sleepy devil that makes sinners nod in church. 
But monsieur has the patience of an angel ! ” 

Now, the crafty old woman had her own opin- 
ion as to Dr. Kendal’s patience. She thought 
that was sufficiently explained by a desire, very 
natural in the village doctor, to lay the De Lan- 
dremont house under such obligation as would 
open its doors to him in the brighter days that 


56 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


were about to dawn upon it. She did not care to 
set herself to thwart that desire ; more especially 
as it enabled her to describe the various phases of 
her rheumatism and have them prescribed for, 
without any drain upon the purse of which she, 
not Pacifique, held the strings, and rather tightly 
too. She did not grumble at the lessons, there- 
fore. 

This one was evidently to be cut short. Ken- 
dal found it impossible to treat this evening as if 
it were anything else than the gate to his whole 
future. What lay beyond it — what it must lead 
to — 

He stood looking at the little creature who 
stopped the gap and would not let him see beyond, 
and was saying saucily : 

“ Indeed, tante Marguite, Hr. Kendal is quite 
satisfied with my progress, and even tells me I 
have taught him something. Though, indeed ” 
— casting down her eyes demurely — “I should 
never have had the assurance to try to do that,” 

Kendal glanced wistfully at the red mouth 
quivering with its suppressed smile. Was he to 
have nothing but a mocking last word from it ? 
“ Won’t you light me out ?” he asked her. 

But she shook her head. 

“ Tante Marguite will, this time, I am sure — 
won’t you, tante Marguite ? I must go over my 
lesson. I promise to be quite perfect in it when 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


57 


you come back — if I can,” she added, lifting her 
eyes with a flashing smile over the screen of her 
open book. And so he went away. 

Somewhat dizzily ; like a man who has stum- 
bled perilously near a precipice’s brink, and only 
just stops himself in time. 

But had he stopped himself in time ? Was it 
not already too late to consider whether he ought 
to have wooed this child ? What did she know 
of love ? “ J’aime I love, I like ” — it was all 
one to her. As he plunged into the dimness of 
the wood-path, he could see again those bright 
eyes flashing laughter at him over the edge of 
her book. 

Eh, well, the pain was only his ; the girl would 
take no harm if this evening’s lesson should not 
be repeated. 

And it must not be repeated now. The man 
was a strong man ; he must keep the mastery 
over himself. A little while, and her mother 
would be here ; Frangoise should choose between 
them then. It was not a dazzling lot, that of a 
poor country doctor’s wife ; if she should take it, 
instead of the new, gay life of which, no doubt, 
her mother would set the door ajar before her 
eyes, it should be with them wide open. 

Meantime, Kendal was very far from giving 
her up, in his mind, much less his heart. All he 
could do to win her trust and faith he would do. 


58 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


That was enough for the present, and the past 
might wait. 

Away olf somewhere in the distance, some rest- 
less brook, released from winter’s bondage, filled 
all the windless hush with babble of spring’s com- 
ing. Up the hill-slope, as Kendal crossed, the 
rising moonbeams drifted level through the black- 
layered fir-boughs, and caught at the slim, silver 
birches, and showed them rough with buds against 
the sky. “ When the leaves come out !” Kendal 
said to himself, with that sense of hope and new 
life which the spring brings with it. 

And yet to-night old memories were stirring. 
As he struck out of the wood, he had fallen un- 
aware into a certain measured tread, catching up 
a snatch of a glee with a martial ring in it, once 
familiar enough to come to his lips now uncon- 
sciously : 

“ When the leaves come out, down with the streams we’ll be 
sweeping ; 

We’ll waken our land from her long winter sleeping.” 

W T hat if Latour were to come with that waking ? 
Was FranQoise sleeping now, under the eaves, in 
the old house ? To Kendal, as he shouldered 
aside a dusky evergreen, and the moon flashed 
out, it was as if her eyes shone out on him again 
over the edge of her book. 

But this time, it seemed to him, not in mock- 
ery. 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


59 


y. 

“ My heart is like a singing bird, 

Whose nest is in a watered shoot ; 

My heart is like an apple-tree, 

Whose boughs — ” 

Oxly, it was the apple-blossoms that the girl 
was like, as she sat swinging amid them, on the 
low bough of the gnarled tree that somehow long 
ago had straggled outside the gate to the road. 

For there was a gate now before the rambling 
De Landremont cottage, though the unpracticed 
eye might not detect it. 

Father, perhaps, the unpracticed eye might 
have taken the whole fence for a succession of 
gates : so alike were all the sections, with their 
heavy top and bottom rail, into which the light 
upright stems fitted like pickets, but with the 
bark still on. It had as rustic a look as the pitch- 
pole, or the old “ Yirginny ” fence, and the green- 
ery pressed nearly up to it, across the road. 

The road was a narrow, disused one ; a mere 
spur of the highway which trends away and away 
up through the Madawaska settlement, beyond 
which the Acadians merge into Canadians. It 
was seldom that any one nowadays turned round 
that bend ; and when Frank heard the beat of 


60 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


hoofs, she never thought of glancing up from the 
long, blue stocking she was knitting, with her 
head bent over it in a brown study, until the rush 
nearer and nearer made her start. 

If that bright bay were not actually running 
away, his driver had at least as much as he could 
do to prevent it, and the solid fence apparently 
in front. 

But, in a flash, there is a gap in it. A section 
of it is lifted out bodily, and Frangoise stands to 
one side, flushed and glowing with her haste and 
her exertion. 

Outside, in the road, the dust blowing about 
her, her homespun dress gathered up, apron-wise, 
over her blue petticoat, for the accommodation 
of the knitting which she has already taken into 
her busy hands again, she has nothing to mark 
her from the bevy of filles whom the traveler 
earlier in his long drive had met returning from 
school, and who had arranged themselves prettily 
along the road-side, with shy nod and smile for 
the passing stranger. This girl looked as young 
as some of those, and as simply dressed ; and the 
young fellow felt he was indemnifying himself 
for the lack of excuse toward those others, when 
in passing he leaned out toward her. 

“Many thanks, my little one,” he was saying, 
in French foreign to the district ; equally foreign 
to France too, Frank was sure, as she caught the 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


61 


Anglo-Saxon intonation. Something else she 
caught, also — the glitter of a piece of silver in his 
hand. 

She put hers out, a little slowly, in response ; 
and he deftly tossed the coin into it. The next 
instant, the restive horse had carried him beyond 
her ; and she speedily effaced herself from the 
scene, pushing through the thicket bordering the 
road. 

That was the last Frank saw of him ; that 
glimpse of the straight young fellow with the fair 
hair and the frank face as beardless as if, accord- 
ing to an old Breton superstition, a careless priest 
had touched him at baptism with “the oil of 
girls. ” 

It was the last she saw of him ; but not the 
first she had heard of him, she was very sure. 

When she was well out of sight, she drew a 
letter from her pocket : one of those rambling, 
inconsequent, gossipy letters which Marie would 
occasionally write to her little sister, now that 
there was no censorious grandmother to inspect 
them. And — yes, it was in this, that Marie told 
of a certain young Englishman who had come 
over on the same steamer to Halifax — Dallas 
Fraser by name. “And as mamma has some- 
where, down about the roots of her family-tree, 
one Euphemia Dallas, we have all come to the 
conclusion that this very big D is a great, um- 


62 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


brageous, golden-leafed branch of the same tree. 
Be that as it may, he is to cast his shadow over us 
in the skirts of the forest, what time the weather 
as well as the calendar shall call it summer. 
Meantime, he is doing Canada, while we remained 
to smother in spring fogs at Halifax, and then 
made our way toward you as far as Fredericton 
here. Will the weather ever let us get any far- 
ther ? When it does, Mr. Fraser is to drive down 
for the fishing, from some place opposite Quebec, 
and we shall drive up the river with a gay party 
promised us from here ; and it will go hard if we 
do not manage to wake all the old woodland 
echoes. ” 

Frank crumpled the letter into her pocket 
again, as she strayed on. She did not linger in 
the greenery, within hearing of the horse’s re- 
turning tread, when the visitor should find the 
house unoccupied ; for Marguite had gone up to 
St. Leonard’s to con f esse, and would not be home 
until late. In fact, the sun had set, when Frank 
strayed back again, and found the old woman 
busy over the kitchen fire. 

Marguite turned round sharply, as the girl 
came breezily in, tossing the coin, and catching 
it as it fell. 

“ Heads or tails, tante Marguite ? If it’s 
heads, it’s mine ; for you will own I’d a very 
good head of my own, to earn it. You should 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


63 


have been here to see how I swung that gate 
open — ” 

“Comme $a! and let in that Nanon Michaud’s 
whole flock of geese ! I might have known I 
could not even go to confesse — •” 

“Without missing visitors? I doubt you’d 
have liked him much better than the geese, tante 
Marguite,”she said, good-humoredly — “ this kins- 
man of Madame Jean’s.” 

“ Dame ! what is the child driving at ? ” 
“What was the man driving at, you mean, 
tante Marguite ? Straight at our fine new fence, 
apparently. Only I stopped him by throwing 
the gate open. Whereupon, he rewarded me as 
you see.” 

She showed the coin in her palm, with a laugh- 
ing air of triumph. 

“Mamselle Fran§uaise ! Mamselle Franyuaise ! 
to think you’d have gone and done such a thing ! ” 
“Why, tante Marguite, the gentleman — ” 

“ A pretty gentleman ! ” 

“A very pretty gentleman, indeed,” says the 
girl, demurely. “ Listen a little, tante Marguite ; 
Madame Jean and her suite will be down upon you 
before you can turn on your heel.” 

“ Saint Anne help us ! what does mamselle 
mean ? ” 

“ That you may call on the best saints for help, 
tante Marguite, but if you don’t bestir yourself. 


64 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


Madame Jean will find you here, under her roof, 
instead of settled under your own.” 

“No, that she shall not! There has been a 
letter ? I’ll move out to the cottage, vie et bagues 
sauves , the very first thing in the morning, you 
will see ! But there has been a letter, mamselle 
Fran9uaise ? Or your Monsieur Tchouse, did he 
bring a message from Madame Jean ? ” 

“Ben, tante Marguite : vie ei bagues sauves ; 
I’ll stand for the bagues , for I mean to go with 
you, just at first. No, no letter, and no chance 
to deliver any message. But the pretty gentle- 
man, my Monsieur Tchouse, is Madame Jean’s 
avant coureur : none other than our — what is it ? 
— twentieth possible cousin, who has lately come 
into a huge English fortune, and is, no doubt, a 
most admirable member of the family.” 

“Impossible — ” 

“ But a fact. If you had been a wicked here- 
tic, like some others — ” with a little moue, “ and 
not gone to confesse, you would have had to ask 
him to stay, for your sins. Me, I didn’t know 
what to do with him, I own it. Besides, he had 
given me this.” 

She was tossing the coin gaylv again, moving 
to and fro, the firelight chasing her slim shadow 
here and there, as it flitted about. 

Marguite followed her with her sharp little 
black Dame Partlet eyes ; keen enough after the 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


65 


grain of corn and the earth-worm (or whatsoever 
may represent these, to the human Dame Partlet), 
but dull of vision for much that is as plain to 
other less keen souls as the clouds in an April 
sky. 

Frank’s blue eyes were full of them. They 
portended just such a blinding shower of passion- 
ate tears as fell upon the distaff in her hand, the 
very moment the old woman had pattered out 
with her milk-jug to the spring-house under the 
hill. 

And so he had taken her for one of the village- 
girls, this cousin of hers — of her mother’s. 

And she was just the same as they ; no differ- 
ence. 

But why had not Dr. Kendal told her so ? 
The passionate child was as angry with him as if 
he were responsible for her mortification. 

As for the badge of that mortification, the 
piece of silver, she found a tiny hole in it — or 
made one — and she fell asleep that night with the 
coin strung on a thin gold chain, about her neck, 
and heaving with every stormy heaving of her 
passionate heart, as she lay and dreamed the scene 
all over. 

Only, in her dream, her mother stood by, 
watching with a strange smile, the one thing 
clear to Frank in that misty, half-forgotten 
face. 


5 


66 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACAD IE. 


Perhaps that part of her vision was due to the 
fact that the chain was last clasped about her 
neck by her mother’s hand. Franpoise had never 
worn it since she came here, and tante Marguite 
held the slight thing in her hand, in unpacking 
the child’s trunk, and delivered her first sermon 
to mamselle Fran9uaise with Madame Jean for 
text. 

Franpoise had kept it hidden away ever since 
— a sort of fetich, half cherished and half dreaded 
— before which, tucked away in the corner of her 
little trunk with which she was sent home to 
Madame de Landremont, she would kneel now 
and then, looking at it with brooding eyes, as if 
it represented the mother whose actual personality 
was so overlaid by tante Marguite’s legends and 
traditions, that, like many another worshiper, 
little Fran poise on her knees was not sure if the 
object of her cult were more demon or more 
angel. 

And this it was, to which she linked the coin 
so lightly tossed to her by Dallas Fraser. 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


67 


VI. 

“ Tu t’en vas, tu d61aisses ta personne ; 

Tes promcsses sont des angros : 

Tu m’avas promis la foi bonne, 

Aimer ta personne ’usqu, & la mort — 

A pr6sent tu m’ abandonnes, 

Tu t’eloignes de ce port — ” 

The shrill, wild yoice was disputing for the 
right to be heard, with the deep boom of the 
Grand Falls down into their rocky basin, and the 
rush of the rapids against the foot-rocks of the 
w r alls which shut that basin in : 

“ Mon batimaine est mouille en rade — 

Trois de mes camarades 
Qui vont voguer — 

J’entends la cloche qui sonne : 

Ma mignonne, 

Faut s’embarquer.” 

Evidently the lover in the song had “ one foot 
on sea and one on shore,” and took his leave in 
jolly strain. But his “personne ” had the last 
word, with her : 

“ Triste ’oiture qu’ an vaisseau — 

Triste ’oiture qu’ an vaisseau” — 

and the singer’s voice changed into that wild, de- 
spairing cry that had pierced through the boom- 


68 A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 

ing of the waters, and reached the ear of a man 
clambering down the steep face of the cliff above 
her. 

He had come here to see the rapids, and the 
curious wells formed in the rocks among them. 
But now it is the singer who draws him down 
from crag to crag, until — 

Yes, there she lies in the sunshine on the rocks ; 
a little, curled-up figure, with round, half-bared 
arm flung across the upturned face, so that hardly 
anything is to be seen of it but the red lips shrill- 
ing forth the ditty. 

So pretty a picture she makes there, that the 
man who has just burst upon it stands to look. 
Startled, too ; for she has chosen her resting-place 
amid such a fury of waters, that he half puts out 
his arm as if an inadvertent move of hers might 
send her slipping off the rock’s smooth surface 
down into the torrent. 

As he looks, the very rocks seem to heave with 
the long, rhythmic upheaval of the rapids. The 
waters rise and fall like the ground T swell of a 
heavy sea, only broken into broad swaths that 
twine under and over one another, in and out. 
The brown translucent water, fretted as it is with 
snowy spray against the base of the steep cliffs 
that close the gorge on either hand ; the flakes of 
foam swept downward in the current from the 
cataract above ; the blue-green, yellowed here and 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


69 


there, of firs and spruce-trees standing stiff and 
dour in the cleft precipice’s face ; the shimmer- 
ing silver-stemmed birch a-tremble in the breeze 
above ; the ferns and mosses, and the lichens 
many-hued, that paint the walls of this rock- 
chamber, which a sudden turn in the sharp preci- 
pice shuts in — it all photographs itself in the yel- 
low afternoon light on the young man’s mind, as 
the background to that picture of the figure prone 
upon the rocks. 

A child’s figure ? 

Half he hesitates ; till, peeping from beneath 
the dimpled elbow as she lies, he catches sight of 
a thin black book — “ Primer — ” 

That is all there is to be seen of the title ; but 
it seems to be enough to give him leave to stoop 
and put his hand upon her shoulder, giving it a 
little shake, as the torrent drowned the sound of 
his tread. 

“ My dear — ” 

She was on her knees in an instant, that being 
the position the most swiftly attainable on the 
slanting rock. The small, round, lifted face was 
just one of those over-leaning rock-roses, for color, 
as he looked down into it, and said : 

“ I beg your pardon, but I have quite lost my 
way, and I think you could put me into it. Be- 
sides,” he added, with a smile, “ I am afraid you 
are playing truant down here. It will never do 


70 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


to waste the whole dav, and your primer all un- 
learned.” 

She had caught up the little book, folding it 
in her apron, as she looked down, blushing still. 
Was she so much ashamed of playing truant ? 
“Plait-il?” she said, as if she had not under- 
stood ; and then, thinking better of it, “ Where 
is it monsieur wishes to go ? ” 

“ To the old De Landremont place. Do you 
know it ?” 

“ Yes, I know it. If monsieur goes up to the 
bridge, and then into the woods beyond — ” 

“But it is precisely short of the bridge that I 
have lost myself. Dp there, above the cliffs, the 
clumps of evergreens have planted themselves out 
in the most bewildering of labyrinths, among 
which one may very well need a guide.” 

She opened her blue eyes wide. 

“ Monsieur is a stranger, then ? Perhaps the 
English cousin who is expected ? ” 

“Yes, I am the cousin, certainly. Is the 
neighborhood expecting me ? ” he said, half laugh- 
ing ; “ for I understand the family have not ar- 
rived.” 

“Eh, not the neighborhood ; they never heed 
what passes under the De Landremont roof. But 
tante Marguite — she that used to be housekeeper 
there — had a letter bidding her make ready, that 
the family were coming, and guests with them.” 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 71 

“ Tante Marguite ? ” What a dainty little 
creature, for a niece to the housekeeper ! 

“ Couldn’t you manage, since through your 
good aunt we are in a manner acquaintances, to 
guide me through the firs ? ” 

She rose to her feet, tilting her hat over her 
face, and deftly gathering up the folds of her 
homely dress in such a fashion as that no mascu- 
line eye would detect its proper “grown-up” 
length. To be sure, now that she was standing, 
the young man thought her rather tall to be pur- 
suing her studies in a primer. But then he re- 
flected how backward must be education in this 
part of the world ; and the little, dimpled, child- 
ish face — 

“And yonder is your school-room, down among 
the waters ? ” 

“ Yes ; does not monsieur like it ? ” 

“ So well that I wish I might learn my book 
there, one of these bright days.” 

But the girl took no notice of the questioning 
inflection ; and he fell back upon the orthodox 
inquiries one makes of a school-girl concerning 
her studies. 

“ It is not the French abece,” he said, stoop- 
ing slightly for a glance at her black primer ; 
which, however, he failed to get, as it was still 
wrapped in the apron, not to show him that it 
was a recent hand-book primer of English liter- 


72 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


ature. “ They teach you English at the school ? ” 
he said, in English. 

The Sisters who teach pass the regular exami- 
nations as public-school teachers, Frangoise told 
him. 

“ Me, my English has its faults,” she added, 
demurely, dropping her French; “my remem- 
ber6e is not too good.” 

“ Is it not ?” said Fraser, laughing ; regretting 
the laughter the next moment, as it seemed to 
have the effect of silencing the little creature trip- 
ping on before him. 

The steep climb to the summit of the cliff had 
been made, and they paused on the brink to- 
gether, for a moment’s looking down upon the 
gorge, and on the wild, white water beating and 
tearing its way out of those towering prison-walls. 
And then the two went on among the shrubbery- 
like clumps of evergreens, where Dallas Fraser 
might well have lost himself in the labyrinth, as 
he had said. But, after all, was it not as good a 
method as any other, of ridding himself of a long 
afternoon ? He was quite sure of it, when he 
brought his roving glance from the tangled green- 
ery upon all hands, back to the little creature 
tripping on demurely at his side. 

“ I hope I am not taking you too far out of 
your way ? ” he said, comfortably ; not from any 
intention of releasing her, but to hear her voice 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACAD IE. 73 

again. Then he leaned forward, trying to see her 
face ; and, failing : 

“ Are yon not leading me blindfold ? For I 
am quite sure you can not find your way out of 
the depths of that hat — I have quite lost you 
in it.” 

“ But then that does not matter, as monsieur 
is not looking for me, but for the road.” Then 
she pushed it back a little, glancing up at him. 

“ I don’t wear it all the time. It is only my 
study-cap ; it shuts out everything but the book, 
you know.” 

“ Envious thing ! I am glad you don’t. And 
you come here to study every day ? ” 

“ When I have nothing better to do.” 

“ Then there are things better ?” 

“ But, yes ; much better. For instance, when 
I go out for a long day on the barrens, and — 
ramosse des granages — what you call, pick ber- 
ries.” 

“The berries are for your — aunt Margot, 
isn’t it?” 

She lifted her eyes, with a malicious laugh in 
them. Would he be very much discomfited at 
finding that she was his cousin : she whom he had 
evidently taken for the housekeeper’s niece ? 

He had caught the gleam of amusement in her 
glance. 

“ How stupid I am !” he cried. “Of course 


71 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


it was you ! You were at the gate, and opened it 
to me when my horse was running away. That I 
am here safe and sound I owe to you.” 

A tide of crimson flooded the girl’s face. 
Owed ! — she recalled, well enough, how he had 
paid that debt. 

That coin was like a seal upon her lips. Why 
should she confess to him who she really is ? He 
will go away soon, and he need never know. 

Surely, she could keep out of his way for a few 
days. If need be, she could stay with tante Mar- 
guite till he is gone. 

They had skirted Grand Falls village by this 
time ; and the rush of waters under the suspen- 
sion-bridge, as the two crossed it, took away all 
occasion for speech, if his words called for any 
answer. The smooth river, glowing in the slant- 
ing beams with soft, changeful, opalescent lights, 
speeds calmly to the very brink of the wide horse- 
shoe, all the curve of which it fills with glancing 
rainbow spray, as it fills the tranquil evening and 
the darkening chambers of the winding gorge 
with the clamor of its thunderous voices. Other 
voices sink into instinctive silence. The grave- 
browed habitant on foot nods a mute salutation 
to his neighbor plodding home behind his oxen, 
whose ponderous tread upon the bridge falls as 
noiselessly as that of the moccasined Indian, slip- 
ping like a sun-bronzed shadow past the curve of 


A. LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


75 


woods. Fraixjoise shows him by a slight gesture 
to her companion ; but does not explain, until, 
on the sloping road beyond the gorge, they look 
down toward the cataract. 

Then she tells Dallas Fraser its old Indian 
tradition : of the brave Milicete girl taken prisoner 
by a hostile band, who forced her to act as guide 
in a descent on her own tribe ; and how she led 
the descent in her canoe, straight for the treacher- 
ous falls, and death with her tribe’s enemies. 

She told it with a sparkle in her eyes, at which 
Dallas protested he could not but feel uneasiness, 
lest that sort of thing should be the prevalent 
fashion for guides all about Madawaska. At 
which — for it takes little enough to set two young 
people laughing together on a golden summer aft- 
ernoon — they went on merrily, by a short-cut, 
where Frank flitted past him, glancing back at 
him, over her shoulder, with a nod : 

“ Follow me — if you can trust me ! ” 

For a few yards plunging deep into the thicket, 
where her brown hands held back the boughs to 
let him through. To leave herself the freer, she 
had caught her gown up through her belt, in a 
festoon here and there, that gave a glimpse of a 
dark-blue petticoat, and a foot and ankle in keep- 
ing with the pretty, rounded figure. It was well 
worth watching in its supple motions, as it went 
on before him, so free and natural, with such an 


76 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


utter absence of self-consciousness, such an igno- 
rance of the charming moving picture she made in 
the rather washed-out homespun ; the trouble- 
some hat dangling now from her arm, and sundry- 
rebel locks breaking out of confinement and curl- 
ing softly all about her warm white neck and 
that crumpled rose-leaf of an ear. 

Somehow, Dallas did not regret the narrow- 
ness of the path, that would not admit of two 
walking abreast. One may take a more com- 
fortable look at a pretty thing like that, when not 
stopped by a pair of frank and sudden eyes that 
have a trick of intercepting such a look. 

But he was stopped suddenly by a quick, 
startled, almost frightened gesture from the girl. 

She stood in the path, her two arms raised to 
ward off a tangle of wild brier which the wind 
flung toward her. But she forgot it, and stood 
motionless in a listening attitude. 

Dallas went to her hastily. He could not see 
her face, nor the object, whatever it might be, at 
which she was gazing so intently. From his 
standpoint, there was a blank of greenery all 
about. Only, on one round arm still raised me- 
chanically to ward off the briery bough — on that 
arm, bared to the dimpled elbow by the brier 
catching at her sleeve, he saw a sharp red line, a 
crimson drop that trickled down. 

The sight of blood may turn some men pale, 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


77 


but it brought the hot color into Dallas Fraser’s 
face. He pushed in between her and the thorns. 

“ You have hurt yourself — for me ! ” 

She shook off his touch with an impatient 
movement. She hardly heard his words ; she 
was not even looking at him. She put her finger 
to her lips with a gesture of silence, still in that 
expectant and yet shrinking attitude. And as 
they stood thus for an instant, there came to his 
ear also the sound which had reached hers first : 
the sound of wheels approaching. 

“ We are near the road, then ?” he said. 

As he stepped before her, the green boughs 
gave way like a curtain swept aside, and showed 
him the overgrown road ; and, breast-high in the 
weeds, a pair of grays drawing a close traveling- 
carriage. 

“It must be Mrs. de Landremont arrived at 
last ! ” said he, turning toward his guide. 

But she was no longer at his side. There was 
the flutter of a homespun dress, a rustling through 
the thicket ; and he stood alone upon the bank 
above the road, along which came the carriage. 

The carriage ? — no, but two, three — quite a 
procession, looking very much like conveyances 
gathered at hap-hazard in the village. Out of the 
foremost, a charming face he knew was leaning 
from the window, smiling and nodding to him. 


78 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


VII. 

‘‘Free Heart, that singest to-day 
Like a bird on the first green spray, 

Wilt thou go forth to the world 
Where the hawk hath his wing unfurled 
To follow perhaps thy way ? 

Where the tamer thine own will bind, 

And to make thee sing, will blind — 

While the little hip grows for the free behind ? 

Heart, wilt thou go ? — 

Ah, no ! 

Free hearts are better so.” 

“But where is Frank?” said the owner of 
that charming face, not many moments later, 
pausing at the foot of the door-steps, by which 
most of the little procession that had come gayly 
up from the gate to the house had already disap- 
peared within. 

Marie asked the question, and the girl behind 
her — who looked indeed like an embodied echo of 
her — emphasized it, “ Where is Frank ? ” — with 
apparently little expectation of an answer, as she 
gazed helplessly about her. 

There was neither shrubbery nor undergrowth 
now, to hide so much as a mouse, in the level 
space which Pacifique had trimmed up until it was 
anything but ornamental. Trim it was, indeed ; 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


79 


an array of formal beds, in which no flowers were 
set out as yet, and only the whitewashed stones 
pointed out their places. All the ferns had been 
uprooted, and the sumacs and the brier-roses de- 
molished. Fran§oise might not like it as well 
as in its days of ragged picturesqueness ; but it 
was a model of neat precision. Even the old 
house had a rejuvenated air, with its fresh paint. 
Its very disheveled vines were stroked down into 
decorous bands that lay smoothly above the 
windows no longer staring out like empty eye- 
sockets ; but curtained, and with a certain look 
of quiet possession, observable about the whole 
face of the house. Bonhomme Pacifique potter- 
ing about the littered yard had been in keeping 
with the past regime . Under the present, a maid 
tripped briskly forward from the spring-wagon 
turning from the gate, to take the ladies’ shawls ; 
and another, a staid elderly body sent back by 
Mrs. de Landremont, stood waiting a respectful 
instant to show the way indoors. 

“ Please, miss, your mamma says it is not long 
before dinner.” 

“And we must make ourselves beautiful for 
it ; and if Mr. Fraser has not changed since when 
we knew him on shipboard, a dinner — even the 
sort of picnic dinner which I am afraid is all we 
can expect to-day — served at the fitting moment, 
is not a matter of sublime indifference.” 


80 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


That same brilliant face turned round upon 
Fraser with a laugh ; and the last of the proces- 
sion vanished in the doorway. 

Up-stairs the burden of the question was taken 
up again : 

“ Where on earth can Frank be all this 
while ? ” 

It was in the old madame’s repainted, spotless 
rooms, where the ancient mahogany looked so 
gloomy and heavy ; and like an answer came a 
slight, uncertain stir in the inner room. 

Mrs. de Landremont did not hear, leaning 
listlessly back as she was in madame’s own easy- 
chair in the window ; nor did Arsine, who stood 
gazing dismally out of it. “1 did not know it 
would all be as new and bald and four-square as 
it is ! There is not a nook or a corner for a 
bit of romance about it. Mamma, if this was the 
sort of home Evangeline was carried off from — ” 

But Marie, turning round from the mirror, 
had caught sight of a little homespun figure hesi- 
tating on the threshold of the other doorway, 
with a hand upon the lock, in the act of flight. 

“ There is some one, mamma, who perhaps will 
know where to find — Frank, can it be you ? ” 

Frank left the handle of the door, and came 
forward, half proudly, half shyly. 

She was made aware of her sister’s mistake, 
by the startled change of tone, as the wearer of 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


81 


the homely frock turned her face slowly round. 
Frank was not surprised by the mistake : her only 
wonder was, that the tall and dainty creature in 
gray serge and silk, who came rustling to meet 
her, could be her sister. 

Yes ; and Ars&ne, too. 

Frank certainly felt herself at fault as they 
embraced her, and exchanged glances with lifted 
eyebrows quite over her head. What a thing it 
is, the consciousness of a rather washed-out frock ! 
For the first time in her life that consciousness 
came to Frank, although the washed-out frocks 
were by no means new to her. And through it 
all, she was led forward until she stood before the 
easy-chair in the next room. 

Then somehow her hands were in her mother’s, 
and she was being drawn down until the two 
faces leaned together, and there came the touch 
of lips upon her brow. 

Only a light, swift touch. Frank had shrunk 
away a little, unconsciously ; and the eyes fixed 
searchingly on hers, darkened with pain. The 
mother felt her shrink, and let her go. 

The years of separation had opened a gulf be- 
tween the two. To the mother, it had seemed 
that at a glance, a touch, it must close, and give 
her little one, her youngest, back to her. She 
had not counted on the shortcomings of a child’s 
memory : its forgetfulness of many things ; its 
6 


82 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


readiness to take impressions from those near at 
hand. The grandmother and Marguite had con- 
fused the image of her mother in Fran9oise’s mind, 
until there remained but the blurred travesty of 
her. 

The mother dimly felt this, without under- 
standing it ; and let her go, forcing a smile. 

“ You see, we have come rather earlier than 
we expected. We took advantage of the first ex- 
cursion-boat up the river to the foot of the falls. 
We were fortunate in finding conveyances of one 
kind or another in the village, to bring us all out 
without delay. ” 

Frank said nothing, in the pause. She was 
standing up now before her mother, looking at 
her with a sort of enforced criticism. 

Garden roses are too rare in all this Madawaska 
region, to offer themselves to. the little acadienne 
in the way of comparison ; but if she had been 
familiar with a certain cluster rose of our ac- 
quaintance, the three faces grouped together be- 
fore her, would not have failed to suggest it. 
Marie’s ‘ flower-like face ” brilliant and glowing, 
as if it had drawn into itself all the best of the 
air and the sun ; the other two paling out in their 
different degrees, not as if they were faded, but 
grown into more or less faint reflections of the 
other, putting up with that second-best of air 
and sunshine. 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


83 


To the girl’s eyes, suddenly hot with painful 
tears for her father’s loss which this meeting 
pressed back on her, the mother’s calm seemed a 
serenity untouched by life’s hardnesses. Fran- 
§oise did not know how hard her young face 
grew. But her mother did, with one glance at it. 

The two had no need to say anything more 
to each other just now ; for Marie was exclaim- 
ing : 

“ How could you manage to have changed so 
little in all these long years, Frank ? You see, it 
is impossible to call you anything but the old 
name. You are just the same shy little creature ; 
only, instead of the light ripples all over your 
head — ” touching the sunny waves — “ You, must 
let my maid arrange your hair for dinner, child ; 
it will be a real pleasure to Elise to get all this 
into her hand, for it is not a half satisfaction to 
her artist-soul,” she said, with a laugh, “ to go 
to work with the braids and puffs she has to eke 
out mine with.” 

“Oh — but yours is such a pretty shade, 
Marie ! ” The first in a little burst of disappoint- 
ment ; the other in genuine admiration of the 
red-hrown tresses shining with the same warm 
color as Marie’s eyes. 

Marie threw a not discontented glance over 
her shoulder into the mirror. “ I suppose color 
does go a long way nowadays ; only it does not 


81 


A LITTLE MAID OF A CAD IE. 


make one a heroine to one’s femme de chambre. 
But come, mamma, if you don’t order us off to 
our toilets, and bestir yourself about your own, 
we shall never be ready for dinner, and that is a 
bad beginning of the new life. Elise shall come 
to you, Frank, the moment I can spare her. Let 
her choose your dress for you ; her taste is per- 
fect.” 

Fran9oise took a fold of her homespun be- 
tween her fingers, rolling it together in an em- 
barrassed way. 

“ I — I think — 1 won’t come down to dinner, 
Marie. ” 

“Not come down to dinner!” — the two 
sisters : the one echoing the other. 

“I— this is just about as good as anything I 
have to wear.” 

Frank said this with a touch of self-asserting 
pride, lifting her head. 

“Frank !” 

But the mother, with a certain perceptible 
effort, as if she were hardly accustomed to inter- 
fere with Marie’s decisions, interposed depre- 
catingly. 

“ Might not all that wait, Marie ? Of course, 
Fran9oise — she has been but a child — her grand- 
mamma would think. She is half a child ; she 
will not object to waiting until we can send away 
for what she needs, to Fredericton or St. John.” 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


85 


The girl turned with a flash in her eyes. 

“ The frock is good enough for me. I am not 
ashamed of it. I do not want to go down to din- 
ner. I care nothing for your town finery !” 

“ Frank!” 

But she was out of the room in a small whirl- 
wind. 

Out of the room, and safe up-stairs in her own 
old one under the eaves. 

But not so safe as that, after a while, a tap 
should not come to her door. 

Fran9oise did not say “ Come in ” ; no, not 
when presently the tap was repeated. She held 
her breath, as she half crouched, half knelt in 
her deep window. She lifted her head a little, 
couched on her arms in a listening attitude. 
Would not the footsteps pass away from her 
threshold, if she gave no sign ? 

But the door was opening, and Marie came in, 
with something gray and lustrous trailing from 
her arm. She gave a start when she saw the 
small brown heap in the window-seat. She went 
back and shut the door, and threw her light bur- 
den across a chair. 

“See, Frank, I have something to show you, 
something I would like your opinion of.” 

When Frank did not stir, Marie went up to 
her and gave her a friendly shake. 

“ Come, come, wake up ; this will never do.” 


80 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


And then, stooping over her : “ What, tears ? 
For the shabby gown, child ? Only look here ! ” 

It would have taken some determined resist- 
ance to withstand Marie’s gentle violence. And 
as Frank was by no means determined to resist, 
she was drawn to her feet, and forward to the 
chair, Marie still holding her hands. 

“ Tell me, Frank, is it pretty ? Would I look 
pretty in it, with the ribbons just to match your 
eyes ? ” 

The child caught her breath. She had never 
seen anything so dainty in the way of a dress, as 
that silky gossamer, with its fringed knots of vio- 
let, and the lace laid like a faint frost-breath here 
and there, to soften all. As Marie went forward 
to shake out a fold, and in so doing let go her 
hands, Frank clasped them together with a gest- 
ure of delight. 

“ But it is as pretty as a flower ! I wonder 
there are no flowers of silver gray like that. May 
I ” — suddenly growing shyer — “may I see you in 
it, when you are dressed ? — with the violet rib- 
bons and all ? ” 

But when Marie had made her understand 
that Elise had deftly altered it for Frank herself, 
the color flamed into her face, and she did not 
put out a hand, as her sister pushed the chair 
with its flowing draperies toward her. 

“ Why, what a willful puss it is ! ” cried Marie, 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


87 


after a pause of vain expectation. “ Come, now, 
I meant to leave you to Elise, but now I shall 
see you don this thing myself, for I perceive you 
are not to be trusted. ” 

Frank stood like a rebellious child, one shoul- 
der raised pettishly, surrendering herself as if 
afraid altogether to revolt against her tall sister 
who had taken her in hand. She was fingering the 
gold chain about her throat, glad that it was long 
enough to hide its odd pendant of a silver coin 
in her bosom, and thus save her from a possible 
question, as Marie took her by the shoulders, and 
turned her round, and made a dash at the fasten- 
ings of the despised frock, which she let fall to 
the floor, as she might have undressed a child. 

“ Did they mean to keep you an infant al- 
ways ? — a frock like this ! How old are you, 
Frank ? Only seventeen ? Well, well, you need 
not look so penitent ; you will amend of that. 
Only seventeen, eh ? I suppose, then, we might 
keep Cinderella awhile longer in the nursery 
chim ney-corner — ” 

Marie put her head on one side, with an air of 
deliberation, as she watched the girl. But seeing 
relief instead of dismay in the small face, she 
laughed outright, and rested her two jeweled 
hands on the girl’s pretty, plump, bare shoulders. 

“ No no, you are not to get off in that fash- 
ion ! All these people who have arrived with us. 


88 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


you must meet them at dinner, whatever mam- 
ma said : else it will have a queer look, as if we 
were hustling you into the background. And 
you know 7 , my dear, people might then recall the 
fact that I am only a step-sister, and plain Mary 
Smith. Fancy ! when I have chosen to be Marie 
de Landremont ever since I went home to you 
from school, and found your papa was not at all 
the typical step-father.” 

Fran9oise winced. “ Do not let us speak of 
that, Marie. I never speak of it. I like to think 
you are my own whole sister, just the same as Ar- 
s&ne, or Anne, or Melerente.” 

“ You never speak of it ? not even to your 
great friend Dr. Kendal ? ” 

Frank could not have said that Marie empha- 
sized those words, though certainly the pressure 
of the jeweled hands upon her shoulders seemed 
to lay stress on them. She could feel the sharp 
setting of the rings. 

She opened her eyes wide. 

“No — oh, no. Why should I ?” 

“ Good child ! ” said Marie carelessly, letting 
her hands fall. “ Why should you, indeed ? ” 
She stood looking at her little sister, but in 
reality not seeing her. Frank would have been 
startled enough, could she have followed Marie’s 
thoughts. They had gone back a long way ; far- 
ther than Frank, farther even than Marie could 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. £9 

remember. In this old house, which Marie saw 
now for the first time, her mother’s romance had 
begun. Anne Thibodeau was as young as this 
little daughter of hers, when first she came here 
from the States, on a visit to her kindred on 
the St. John. The romance, indeed, had begun 
with Francis, not with Jean. It was broken off 
on Anne Thibodeau’s return to St. Louis, where 
the girl submitted to a Frenchily-arranged match, 
that gave her the name of Smith — a name heavily 
and richly gilded. It was in her early widow- 
hood that old Madame de Landremont wrote and 
renewed her invitation, hoping to renew the en- 
gagement with Franyois. The young widow came 
back on another visit to the St. John, and fell 
in love with the wrong brother, and the wrong 
brother with her. It was a passion that flung 
everything else to the winds. They were married 
notwithstanding the old madame’s anger, and a 
provision in the late Mr. Smith’s will, by which, 
in the event of his widow’s remarriage, the guar- 
dianship of his little daughter and his daughter’s 
fortune passed into the hands of his brother. It 
was not until Mary was rather older than Fran- 
yoise now, that she came home to her mother 
from school. Her father’s name was no longer 
gilded by the fortune her uncle had lost for her ; 
and it was then that she chose to be Marie de 
Landremont, as she told Franyoise, finding her 


90 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


step-father by no means the typical one. She had 
had another reason for the change — the beginning 
of a new life abroad, utterly broken off from the 
old one. But this was a reason Marie told to no 
one. Neither why she had chosen at this time to 
bring her mother over here. Marie usually had 
her reasons, for all she chose sometimes to ap- 
pear inconsequent enough. 

As she was in her speech now, patting Frank’s 
shoulder : 

“ After all, Frank, I am no cruel step-sister, 
any more than Ars&ne. We are well-disposed 
creatures, on the whole, who mean to be good to 
Cinderella — so long as she does not step in and 
carry off the prince,” she added, with a flashing 
smile of satisfaction at her own image in the glass. 

“ Who is the prince, Marie ? ” 

The elder sister started, and colored slightly. 

It was not her wont to be embarrassed ; but 
there was just a hint of confusion in her laugh. 

“ The prince, child ? Who knows — perhaps 
he has been waiting for me all this while, up here 
in the skirts of the forest ? There, now, Cinder- 
ella is dressed for the ball, and she may come and 
look at herself in the mirror.” 

A worm-eaten oval, with plenty of blurred 
rings over its once bright surface, it yet gave 
Frank a full-length vision which, advancing to- 
ward her, fairly bewildered her. 


A LITTLE MAID OF AC A DIE. 


91 


She put her hands across her eyes ; then looked 
again, as if this time she expected some different 
reflection. 

There it was still ; all silvery and white and 
golden, as Marie lightly pulled the pin out of the 
loosely-knotted hair, and let down the whole in a 
bright flood. There needed no other sunshine to 
light up the whole picture. 

“ So you, too, think it charming, Frank?” 
Marie was laughing, nodding at the mirror. 
“Such nonsense, that ‘ beauty unadorned/ isn’t 
it ? Of course it will not do to pose outright for 
Little Goldilocks” — touching the bright waves 
with soft, admiring hand — “but Elise will see at 
once how to do it in some graceful, girlish way ; 
you know it is well not to go over seventeen. It 
won’t do for you to be ‘out’ yet; you are too 
young to go out.” 

Frank turned round with startled eyes. 

“Not go out— too young to go out!” she 
cried, breaking into French in her dismay. “ Moi, 
who go out every day and all day long ! I don’t 
see what you are laughing at ! ” she cried, begin- 
ning with trembling hands to unfasten the won- 
derful robe which had turned into fetters all at 
once. “ But if you think I am going to be kept 
indoors because of your fine clothes ! I would 
like to know — ” 

Marie good- naturedly gathered up over her arm 


92 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


the dress Frank spurned aside with her foot. She 
gave a reassuring pat to the child’s dimpled shoul- 
der ; which, however, was brusquely shrugged 
out of reach. 

“ You must let me laugh a little, when you 
say ‘saouaire’ for ‘savoir,’ my little Frenchwom- 
an. What a small termagant it is ! Don’t do 
that before Arsene or mamma, my dear ; you 
would frighten them. Don’t you know it is an 
impossibility to stamp one’s foot, or to — kick — 
anything out of one’s way, even though it chance 
to be a toilet from Paris ? Now I wonder if 
you are not the only girl of seventeen in the whole 
civilized world ignorant of the great meaning of 
that word ‘out’?” 

Marie went on to explain it. “Now that 
Anne is married to her German baron,” she add- 
ed, “and keeps Melerente with her — twins are 
so absurdly inseparable ! — it is your turn. But 
first you should have some lessons, wherever mam- 
ma settles next winter. Oh, yes, of course no- 
body could winter here. It was just a whim of 
mine, our coming now, instead of sending for you. 
Your letters put it into my head ; and as mamma 
was glad to come — But about you,” she re- 
sumed, as if mamma’s wishes were hardly worth 
dwelling on — “ no doubt you have had a govern- 
ess, or master — ” 

She made a pause at the last word, with a 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


93 


sharp, furtive glance at Frank, while apparently 
absorbed in smoothing out a knot of ribbon on 
the dress. 

“No, I never had a governess. But I have 
had lessons ; you know I wrote you monsieur le 
docteur — ” 

“ Oh, of course ! ” Marie affected a slight 
yawn. “ The village apothecary ; I suppose chem- 
istry was part of the course ? Did you find the 
lessons interesting ?” 

“Until the snow went, and the sunny days 
and flowers came. I like those much better than 
the books,” Fran?oise confessed. And then, with 
compunction: “but that is not good to say, after 
all monsieur le docteur’s trouble.” 

“ This kind old doctor — he is not young ?” 

“ Oh, no,” the girl said promptly ; “ I should 
think he must be as old as — oh, suppose, as old as 
Uncle Frank was, that once when he came to see 
us in Liverpool. I’ve thought he was like Uncle 
Frank.” 

“ Like — ” 

Marie repeated the word sharply. “Fran r 
<jois de Landremont was fair, like you.” 

“ But it was not in face, that I meant ; it was 
in kindness, in goodness to me. Marie, if I had 
known nothing, just nothing at all, when you 
came : if monsieur le docteur had not taught 


91 A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 

Marie’s face lost the hard lines which for a 
moment had sharpened every feature. She drew 
a long, deep breath. It might have been a sigh 
of relief, but she turned it into another half-sup- 
pressed yawn, as if deprecating school-girl con- 
fidences. 

“ Time enough, child, to learn all our several 
attainments ; just now we must have more regard 
to the adornment of the person than the mind. 
I am off, and will send Elise to you as soon as I 
can spare her.” 

When Elise had completed her transformation- 
scene with Frangoise, she had a message to deliver, 
that mademoiselle was to stop in her mother’s 
room on her way down-stairs. Frangoise started 
obediently enough. But when she had reached a 
certain angle in the passage, and heard unfamiliar 
voices beyond it, the little heart which was flutter- 
ing like a bird’s under all this borrowed plumage, 
failed her utterly. She turned and fled down a 
side stairway — “ out,” out at last. 

The kindly twilight blurred with its own gray 
shadows the small gray figure flitting along, until 
the gnarled apple-tree outside the gate bent its 
bough obligingly, offering her a nest secure from 
observation. She took it unhesitatingly, in her 
ignorance of Parisian toilets ; and sat lightly 
swaying to and fro, with no more thought for 
silk than for homespun. 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


95 


She had enough to occupy her otherwise. Her 
hand had stolen up to her throat, twisting and 
untwisting the gold chain to which she had linked 
the coin so lightly flung to her by Dallas Fraser. 

But she was not thinking of Dallas Fraser 
now ; only of her mother, of that averted glance 
in her mother’s eyes, as she looked at her. 

After all these years ! That was the way her 
mother met her, after all these years 1 

The poor, passionate child was covering up 
her hot face, even from the calming touch of the 
cool evening air. She was not crying, she was 
not even thinking ; she was only aching with a 
wild longing to escape, from herself, from the 
contending feelings that were fairly tearing her 
heart to pieces between them. 

She buried her head deeper in her arms. Per- 
haps it was that slight silken stir of hers : she 
missed a step that quickened to her across the 
road. 

“ Frank — ” 

“ 0 monsieur le docteur ! And I wanted you 
so much ! ” 

“ Frank, were you then thinking of me ?” 

“ Eh, not at the moment,” she admitted re- 
luctantly, lest he should go on to ask what she 
was thinking of. “Not at the moment. But 
then I am always wanting you, you see, whenever 
I am lonely. And a big houseful makes one 


96 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


loneliest of all, don’t you think so ? You have 
been in the village — you have heard of the arrival ? 
But how did you ever know me, monsieur, in this 
disguise ? Only see here ! ” 

She was standing before him now, and she 
gave the folds of her dress a toss out over the 
road-side weeds. 

“ Would you have known your Cinderella, if 
you had had a good look at her so, instead of 
stumbling over her huddled all together as she 
might have been among the ashes in the chimney- 
corner ? ” 

He did not answer. He was looking at her in 
a silence at which the girl said, disappointedly : 

“ I thought you would like it. It seemed to 
me I looked a little pretty in it. Not as Marie 
would have looked, of course, but still — ” 

Suddenly Kendal had both her hands fast in 
his. 

“Is it my Cinderella ? my Cinderella, whether 
she wear cotton or silk ! ” And then, as the 
startled pose of her head warned him of his vehe- 
mence, “This is silk?” he said, in a lighter 
tone. “And you are enjoying it, and all the 
other pretty things of your new life ? But why 
are you out here alone, a little, solitary figure 
that drew me across to you as I was passing ? ” 

“Passing?” 

No one knew better than she, that this road 


A LITTLE MAID OF AOADIE. 


97 


led nowhere else ; and slie told him so. “ Where 
could you be passing to, monsieur ? You can’t 
pass to anywhere by our road.” 

“ Well, then — ” laughing, and speaking out, 
as if driven into a corner — “I suppose ‘passing,* 
freely translated, means coming this way in the 
hope of seeing you.” 

“Then I am glad I came out. I wish you 
were coming in. I wish — ” 

She broke off with a confusing flash of mem- 
ory, anent Marie’s mention of the village apothe- 
cary. 

“ Do you wish it, Frank ? Would it make a 
difference in your enjoyment of your new 
life ?” 

He had paled a little, waiting for the answer. 
But he need not have feared it. 

“ Oh, so much difference ! ” said the clear, 
prompt voice. “ I am frightened of the new life. 
I wish we were back in the fire-lit kitchen to-night, 
with tante Marguite asleep in the chimney-corner, 
and the sound of bonhomme Pacifique’s axe 
outside ringing through the stillness, and coming 
in to you and me sitting at the dresser, over our 
books.” 

She was swaying again on her apple-bough 
seat. The faint new moon, still pallid in the 
twilight, flung the leaves in dancing shadows on 
the bright head and lightly folded hands. Some- 
7 


98 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


thing in the demure attitude helped her words to 
carry Kendal back to a certain winter evening in 
the old kitchen, when the dancing firelight had 
flickered on the sunny hair, and face half-blush- 
ing and half-mischievous. 

“ The books — the lessons — Frank, I tried once, 
and but once, to teach you one which afterward 
I thought I had no right to do. I have kept 
silence since then. But now everything is 
changed — I have had news — it is no longer a 
hard, bare life that I would offer you. But what 
am I saying ? — it is not for silver and gold that 
my little girl will come to me, if come she does. 
Only, I have the right to try to win her now, if 
it is not too late. Is it too late, Frank ? Can 
we net go back to that night by the fire, when 
old Marguite pulled out her spinning-wheel 
between us, and you said — Frank, you said the 
lesson was easy, and you did not mean to forget 
it. Have you forgotten ? I love — ” 

“ ‘ Thou lovest — ’ ” she put in promptly, with 
a mocking yet unsteady laugh, willfully misunder- 
standing him. “Eh, monsieur mon maitre, you 
are too much given to review -lessons ; I learned 
my verbs long, long ago ! ” 

He made no answer, even by a movement ; 
and his face could not speak for him, for it was 
in shadow, as he leaned against the fence, under 
the boughs. 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


99 


The silence frightened her. She put out her 
hand, with a shy touch upon his arm. 

“ As if I could not remember, without that ! ” 
she said, under her breath. 

“If I go away for a little while, Frank — ” 

The light touch tightened into a clinging 
clasp, and her other hand stole up, and the small 
fingers locked themselves over his arm. 

“ Going away ? ” 

There was dismay enough in the tone, to sat- 
isfy any lover, however exacting. For the first 
time Kendal looked without a misgiving into the 
young face raised toward him ; into the eyes 
glinting with a sudden rush of tears, and down 
upon the quivering mouth — would a kiss comfort 
it, as it would a child’s ? 

But he only answered : 

“Going away, but to come nearer, Frank. 
Just a little while ; and then will you give me 
such a welcome to your parlor as you used to 
the old kitchen ? ” 

“That I will — always!” There was a ring 
of defiance in her tone. Marie might say what 
she would : Frank would never give up her friend 
— this one friend that she had — were he a thou- 
sand times village apothecary, “That I will — 
always ! ” she said. 

“And you take me on faith ; when you know 
so little of me, really ? ” 


100 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


She shrugged her shoulders carelessly. 

“ Why should I know anything of you, when 
I know you ? ” 

“ But you haye the right, Frank ; and perhaps 
I have been wrong not to have told you every- 
thing. But it is a painful story — ” 

“ Then do not tell me,” she said quickly, with 
a shrinking movement, as if from the pain he 
spoke of. 

“ Oh, not to you, there is no pain in it for 
you. It is only a bitter memory ; a ghost that 
will be laid forever, when I have told it you. But 
let it rest until I come back, if you will. You 
have not asked me where I am going, Frank,” 
he said, with a movement of his hand dismissing 
the subject, and the ghost with it. “ And yet I 
am going a long way. ” 

“ A long way ? ” 

“Even into the States.” 

“ Into the States ! But why ? ” 

“To seek my fortune,” he said, lightly. 
“ What ! you never have guessed that I am what 
you people here call an Ameritchain ? But it is 
no wonder you did not know it : I myself have 
tried so hard to forget it.” 

“But you have been a Canadian — almost an 
Acadian — this long time,” she said, eagerly. 

“ Yes, ever since I fled across the border out 
of prison.” 


A LITTLE MAID OE ACADIE. 


101 


There was a laughing, tone in his yoice ; hut, 
for all the twilight, he was watching her to see the 
effect of his words. 

They had absolutely none, beyond an impa- 
tient movement of her shoulder. She found idle 
jesting out of place while he was speaking of go- 
ing away. 

“ You will not be long, monsieur ? I — they 
are all so different from me — I shall feel so alone 
until you come back.” 

There could have been no more marked differ- 
ence, one would have said, than between this 
dark, grave man older than his years, and the 
little, young creature looking wistfully up at him. 
But just now he saw the difference as little as she. 

“ Long ? — the hours will be days, and the days 
weeks. But as time is counted, it will not be 
long before I come back to claim my little wife.” 

He saw her start at that last word. 

“ What does it mean, then ? Frank, are you 
not to be my wife ? ” 

“ One day ; oh, yes. But it is much too soon 
to think of that. People may.be— engaged— 
a long while first. I — Need we think of that 
now, Dr. Kendal ? ” 

He hastened to reassure her, half-smiling him- 
self, although the glow had passed from his face. 

“Not until you choose ; you shall not think 
of anything until you choose,” he told her, sooth- 


102 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


ingly. “ But, Frank, there are one or two things 
which people — engaged — do sometimes, but you 
have not done.” 

“I am sure I did not know. There are so 
many things I don't know,” she said, naively. 
“ I wish you would just tell me when I am wrong, 
monsieur le docteur.” 

“ There, then.” He shook his head gravely. 
“My name is John,” he said. 

“Oh, but I couldn’t !” she cried, rather ir- 
relevantly. 

“And then, Frank, at parting, people who 
are — engaged — do sometimes — ” 

He might have told her without words, as he 
bent his head. But she drew her breath in such 
a hurried, frightened way, that he stopped. 

“ You do not love me then, Frank, at all ? ” 

Of course she loved him. And he was going 
away. 

An instant’s pause, a little struggle with her- 
self, and she put up her mouth to be kissed, as 
frankly as a child might do. 

Did he not understand her ? For, after all, he 
only took her hands in a firm grasp a moment, 
and then went away. 

He did not even look back as he went ; 
though she sat there with her hand raised to wave 
him a last farewell, when he should reach the 
wooded corner where the lane met the high-road. 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 103 

Five minutes later slie was up-stairs, and slip- 
ping again into her despised homespun frock. 

For, after all, she belonged to the old days, not 
the new ; to the village doctor, to homespun, to 
the kitchen chimney-corner, and tante Marguite. 

As she stole down-stairs and out-of-doors once 
more, she could hear dinner being served in merry 
picnic fashion, in the big weaving-room, which 
had been turned into a dining-hall. 

“ Tante Marguite — ” 

“Eh ! ” The old woman looked round with 
a start, tilting the saucepan as she set it down 
on the glowing coals on her own hearth. “ Mam- 
selle, it’s never you ! At this hour of the even- 
ing ! What are you doing here ? ” 

“ I have made my escape.” The girl came in 
across the threshold, with a nod, and took posses- 
sion of the arm-chair in the window. “They 
put me in their fetters, but I broke loose from 
them.” 

“Fetters, mamselle Fran<juaise !” 

Marguite looked capable of believing anything 
of Madame Jean. 

“ Fetters, tante Marguite ; or perhaps I should 
say, prison-dress. It was very pretty, all rustle 
and ribbons ; but it cramped me. So I have 
stolen away from it, while all those strangers are 
up at the house ; and you must take me in.” 


104 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


“But, mamselle, Madame Jean — ” 

“ Grandmamma said I might, you know very 
well, Margnite. You must go up to the house, 
and tell Madame Jean,” the girl said, with a 
little willful nod. “Or there is Pacifique — he 
can go.” 

Pacifique was coming in with an armful of 
wood. He gave a sort of subdued purr of satis- 
faction when he saw the young mistress in her 
homely frock. 

“ So they haven’t made a fine lady of you all 
at once, mamselle ? That’s well ; but why have 
you sent monsieur le docteur away ? I met him 
on the road, and when I told him it would please 
my old woman well to see him at this time, that 
she had much to try her nerves, he said he was 
leaving the village, and we must send for the 
doctor down Tobique-way. Faites excuse, mon- 
sieur le docteur ! ” — Pacifique shook his solemn 
head, taking both hands to straighten out his stiff 
rheumatic leg, as he deposited the wood on the 
hearth — “but the short-cut into the next world, 
over the twelve hundred and fifty leagues under- 
ground, into the kingdom of the demon, that a 
poor sinner would be sure to find, that goes to 
him down Tobique-way.” 

Frank laughed ; and then grew grave as sud- 
denly. 

“ Gone away ! — ” she said, under her breath. 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


105 


There was an odd sound of respite in the words. 
And then she colored hotly ; because she was a 
just a little shy of being engaged, need that make 
her ungrateful ? 

After all, Marguite was not able to resist the 
opportunity of standing face to face with her old 
enemy, Madame Jean, with the advantage on her 
(Marguite’s) side. 

It was an advantage, certainly, that mamselle 
had come over to Marguite’s faction. 

The sense of this accounted for the ready wel- 
come accorded by the old woman, and the alacrity 
w T ith which she bound on her best high white cap, 
and marched up to the house, prepared to do bat- 
tle, in mamselle’s cause, with Madame Jean. 

But no battle ensued. It was not Madame 
Jean whom Marguite saw ; but a bright-eyed, 
bland, quick-witted young lady, with a laugh in 
her glance that took the quaint old body in from 
head to foot ; and a ready acquiescence in the 
proposal which was meant for a declaration of 
war — that mamselle Frangoise should remain for 
the present at the cottage. A very sensible thing, 
mamselle Marie declared, with a smiling nod ; a 
very sensible thing, until Elise — a perfect treasure 
in an emergency was Elise — should have a proper 
wardrobe comfortably in readiness for Eran9oise. 

“ And — I threw my cap over the mills,” Mar- 
guite said, on recounting the story afterward, 


100 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


winding it up after the manner of the nursery- 
tales. She could never be got to say how the in- 
terview ended. Perhaps on her side it was as well 
that mamselle Marie was not clear as to the Mad- 
awaska patois ; and had a very indistinct idea as 
to what “ le jeoble ” in the old woman’s muttered 
farewell had to do with “le diable.” 


VIII. 

“ The dowie Dean 
It rins its lane, 

And every seven year it gets ane.” 


Frank stands still, leaning both her arms 
against the railing of the suspension-bridge, and 
gazing with suspended breath down on the falls 
spanning the whole river above. 

Just those three deluging days of steady down- 
pour preceding this one of brilliant sunshine, have 
done this ; covering the hurly-burly of stones 
strewing the river-bed, and sending a brimming 
flood from brink to brink. Down into the chasm 
it thunders ; and there, under cover of the rolling 
clouds of spray, it gathers, and whirls away be- 


A LITTLE MAID OF AOADIE. 


10T 

neath the bridge, and through the winding fast- 
nesses of the gorge beyond. 

The bridge is shaking with the clamor of ifc 
and the girl, as she watches, is in a quiver of ex- 
citement. 

For the sudden rise in all the forest-streams 
has offered another opportunity this season for 
the lumber mnn above to float the logs down into 
the St. John. The river is almost at half-freshet ; 
and near the bridge, where the rock- walls draw 
together, a pine-trunk, sucked under by the 
cataract, is spewed out of that foaming mouth, 
and goes spinning down the whirlpool, the great 
mill that grinds away the bark, and leaves it 
stripped and bare to float on to some boom, it 
may be a hundred miles below. 

There is a boom anchored in the river above 
the falls — trunk after trunk chained end to 
end in a long, wavering line, within which the 
others settle themselves into intricate mosaics. 
Frank stands watching the busy scene : the hur- 
rying logs ; the smooth sheen of the treacherous 
current drawing them toward the brink ; the 
swift canoe, manned by two lumber men, rushing 
to the rescue, and here and there dragging into 
the boom some errant log which they tow by 
means of a dog and chain made fast to the canoe. 
How deft they are ! How — 

The dead trunk of what must once have been 


108 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


a monarch of the woods, thrusts the other logs 
aside, and sweeps on past the boom — on and on, 
straight for the falls, faster and faster as it goes. 

The canoe has shot out in pursuit : the “ dog ” 
has gripped the log ; but the current has it too, 
and the current at that point is deadly strong. 

One breathless moment. Afterward, Trank 
might know how her clinging to the rail became 
a passionate grasp, in her suspense, until the ten- 
der palms were bruised. But just now she is un- 
conscious of herself — conscious of nothing but 
that terrible struggle before her. 

Man’s power against Nature’s. 

A struggle for life and death it is, after the 
first. 

For life and death it is, that the men in the 
canoe dip their paddles, striving for every inch of 
treacherous water that might bear them back 
again. 

One breathing-space, and fate appears to pause. 
Canoe and log are motionless. The mighty 
strength of arm put forth by the powerful lum- 
ber men, if insufficient to draw them backward 
out of harm’s reach, still holds them from their 
doom. 

And now — slowly, slowly at first — the current, 
unseen like the resistless forces of Nature, has 
them in its grip, and draws and draws them 
on. 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


109 


Frank’s blue eyes, wide with horror, fasten on 
the man who stands up in the canoe to strike one 
last blow for life : to break the chain which binds 
them to the log swimming lightly away with them 
to the brink of death. 

She sees him grasp his axe, and, with all his 
force, strike at the chain. 

But the iron glances on the iron ; the axe 
misses — hurls itself out of his unnerved hands into 
the sleek water. 

The man — Frank sees his hoary head bowed 
down — drops on his knees in the canoe. His 
comrade, a dark silhouette against the stream be- 
ginning to gleam with the first tranquil mother- 
of-pearl shimmer of sunset, never moves in his 
seat, except for the strong arms which ply the 
paddle as resolutely as if, in spite of every stroke, 
the canoe were not bearing them on swiftly and 
more swiftly to destruction. 

All Frank’s powers of hearing, of seeing, are 
absorbed in the frail birchen thing floating so 
smoothly yonder. If anything else were floating 
on that glassy mirror, she would not know whether 
it were stray log or driftwood tangle. 

Stray log or driftwood tangle, or another boat 
that shoots out from the bank ? 

Shoots out ; speeds like an arrow far across 
the river, between the canoe and the unseen fate 
reaching up after it out of the current. 


110 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


Once more the flash of an axe glints like a 
spark in the red sunset drifting down-stream ; 
and, this time, it does not miss its mark. 

The chain is broken ; the log, with nothing 
now to hold it back, flees to the brink so fast that 
it is all Frank’s eyes can do to follow it. 

For she forces her eves to follow it ; the ten- 
sion of suspense, in watching those two boats, is 
become more than she can bear. 

There is a terror eyen in this watching of hers : 
a heart-sickening dread, as she sees the black line 
sliding over the brink which makes one shining 
curve as clear and smooth and motionless as a 
great arch of frozen water. The snow-drifts of 
spray beat up against it, snatching at that black 
line, whatever it may be, and burying it deep. 
Below, the swaths of water fall apart ; through 
the clear brown rapids there heaves up a black 
something : it may be the jagged peak of a rock 
below. 

The seething waves have gulped it down. For 
one dizzy instant Fran§oise catches her breath 
again, doubting whether the shapeless thing that 
spins before her eyes is log or canoe. 

It is a shout from the bank that reassures her 
— a thin thread of sound, shrill through the tor- 
rent’s roar, that makes itself just faintly heard. 

She steadies herself, clinging with both hands 
to the rail, and looks again for the canoes. 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


Ill 


They are not where she left them. They have 
broken that thread of fate which unseen drew 
them toward the abyss. When she sees them 
again, they are skimming side by side back to the 
bank, where a group of villagers already gathers. 

The voices can not reach her through the 
torrent’s tumult ; but she can see the eager ges- 
ticulations, and here and there can recognize some 
one she knows. She never moves, clinging to 
the rail, and looking — looking — 

“It is the 6tlanger,” a voice said close beside 
her, speaking in French. 

The stranger — the sent of God, as the Breton 
forefathers of the Acadians were wont to say. 

Frank started and turned. 

But the words were not addressed to her. She 
was hardly even observed by the two, an Indian 
and a Frenchman, who were passing over the 
bridge, their tread deadened by the reverberation 
of the falls. It was the Indian who was speaking 
as they went by. 

The stranger ; yes, she knew it was Dallas 
Fraser whom she had seen flinging his life away 
to save the two lumber-men. 

After a little, she roused herself, and turned 
away, homeward ; for she could see the scattered 
groups dispersing, and some of these might be 
coming across the bridge. 


112 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


But, she was trembling with excitement still ; 
and presently, when she heard steps behind her, 
round the bend in the road, she turned aside into 
the bordering thicket, putting up her hands to 
her hot cheeks, which the branching greenery 
veiled completely from the passer-by. 

When she saw that it was Dallas Fraser saun- 
tering along, his hands in the pockets of his 
shoo ting- jacket, his head thrown slightly back 
with a gesture of which she already knew the 
trick — the sun in his fair, frank face, and alto- 
gether a careless look of happy ease about the 
whole man — for an instant she doubted the evi- 
dence of her own eyes : that he had but just 
struggled back from the very brink of death. 

But, after all, why should he not be at ease 
with himself and all the world ? Had not all 
gone so well with him, that Heaven and earth 
must be glad of him ? 

With a swift impulse, the girl stretched out 
her hands toward him ; then suddenly let them 
fall, her color brightening, her faint smile deep- 
ening mischievously. 

For he was whistling, as he went by, beyond 
the screen of underwood which she had only put 
forth her hand to part, but had not parted ; and 
the air of the song was one which he had learned 
from her. 

He was doing it very badly, in a way that 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


113 


spoke ill for his musical memory ; but the air he 
had heard only the other day, down by the wells : 

“ * Tu t’en vas, tu delaisses ta personne, 

Lea promesses sont des angros : 

Tu in’ avas promis la foi bonne — ’ 

What the dickens are ( angros/ by-the-way ? ” he 
said, breaking off as he perceived that he had lost 
the tune. 

And he passed on, round the fringe of alders. 

“ But, Marguerite, the child ?” 

“ The child ” had crossed the bit of greensward 
from the farm-road, and now stood on the thresh- 
old of Marguite’s open door, looking within at 
the two who were seated before the hearth, in the 
full light of the dancing fire. 

The great iron kettle was humming cheerily, 
swinging on the crane ; a savory stew was sim- 
mering away on a glowing bed of coals ; there was 
the smell of bread baking in the brick oven which 
was hollowed out in the side of the chimney, and 
had been heated red-hot with a fire kindled in it, 
now removed to make room for the loaves. Alto- 
gether, with the shining floor, and the gay, be- 
flowered home-made mats scattered about it, and 
the ample dame seated in the firelight at her low 
spinning-wheel, her bundle of flax at her knee, 
8 


114 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


the whole was as cozy a picture of homely com- 
fort as one need hope to find. 

But the other figure opposite — the one in the 
seat of honor, the big, upholstered easy-chair — 
looked far from comfortable. There was a flush 
on her delicate face, which was evidently less due 
to the fire than to some plain speech of her com- 
panion’s ; and the slightly drooping figure in its 
sheeny black, with the gauzy scarf falling back 
from the soft hair a little faded though not gray, 
had a deprecating air about it, which was also in 
the voice that said : 

“ But, Marguerite, the child — ” 

“ Eh, Madame Jean, the child is well enough. 
She is with the folk she has always known. She 
need not be in haste to change — to put herself 
into the kneading-trough, for mamselle Marie to 
make what she will of her. Better a bit of good, 
sound, honest bread, than all those kickshaws 
mamselle Marie’ll twist her into, if she has to 
break off a pinch here, and a corner there, to 
shape it to her will.” 

“ Certainly she has comers enough,” said the 
mother, with a faint sigh ; really to herself, for 
she had remarked that the sharp old woman was 
rather dull of hearing. But the girl in the door- 
way heard her. 

It may be doubted whether Marguite did not 
sec the girl, she was so careful not to glance that 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. H5 

wav. But Madame Jean’s back was turned upon 
the hesitating figure. 

“ Lachuelle ? Mamselle Marie, is it ? ” Mar- 
guite asked, in the country patois . There was no 
one who had fewer corners, nor was more smoothly 
rounded, than this same Marie, as Marguite well 
knew. “ Mamselle Marie, is it ? And is that 
why Madame Jean has not yet married her: 
qu'elle seche sur pied ? ” 

Madame Jean rose, a little wearily. There 
was a keen zest for Marguite in these ambushed 
sorties on the enemy ; but Madame Jean did not 
care even to act on the defensive. She was re- 
treating in order, gathering her draperies about 
her, and answering absently : 

“ You were saying — ? But it is growing 
dark ; I must not stay to talk. You will say to 
my girl, for me, Marguite — ” 

Turning, she faced Fran9oise. 

If she had been prepared, she might have met 
her after the fashion of the other day ; but, taken 
by surprise as she was, all the mother in her 
moved her to put out her arms, and draw the 
child to her breast in a long, close embrace. 

And all the child in Erangoise for one moment 
made her cling there. 

Then suddenly the pressure of the soft, round 
arms relaxed, and the mother at once let her 

go. 


116 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACAD IE. 


FraiK^oise stood apart, looking at her with 
fire in her eyes. 

Had she trapped her into the caress : this fair, 
soft, gentle mother, whom she could so love, if to 
love her did not mean to be false to the father ? 

If these two had been alone with one another, 
perhaps they might have come together readily 
enough ; but tante Marguite’s presence in the 
background was as if it thrust them apart. 

To Frank, she was a breathing warning (rather 
a hard-breathing, not to say contemptuously 
sniffing one) not to forget her allegiance to the 
father who would still have been leal and true to 
Uncle Frank, if a soft face and a light faith had 
not tempted him aside. 

And FranQoise must not be tempted to sur- 
render at a glance. 

Though she would not have said this, even to 
herself, it was this that chilled her manner, while 
her heart was aglow within her, and the red burn- 
ing in her cheeks, and a light, half- warm, half- 
angry, kindling in the blue eyes uplifted to her 
mother’s dark ones. 

Yes, they were dark, like Marie’s and Ar- 
sene’s ; Frank, the only blue-eyed, fair-baired one 
among them all, hardly seemed to count among 
her children. 

“Mignonne,” her mother was saying (an old 
name which Frank had half forgotten), “ if it had 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


117 


not been for these stormy days, in which I would 
not bring you out, I should have come for you 
before. Marie took too much upon herself — ” 
with a faint, unconscious sigh, as if that were not 
altogether abnormal for Marie — “too much upon 
herself, in giving consent for me that you should 
be away from us. Your place is with your 
mother now. To be apart from you, mignonne — 
to have you look upon me as a stranger — child, it 
is more than I can bear ! ” 

Frank’s color came and w'ent. She put her 
hand to her throat, with a catch in her breath, 
before she could say, quietly : 

“You must give me time, mamma. I — 
you have been a stranger all these years — ” she 
burst forth. “ How am I else to think of you ? 
I don’t know anything else.” 

“You can not remember how I loved my 
youngest, my baby ? ” the mother said. 

“I remember you sent me away.” 

“You were your father’s legacy to his old 
mother, Fran^oise. As for me, I knew it would 
not do. But he thought so.” 

There was no touch of blame for him in her 
yoice ; but the hot flame in Fran^ise’s cheeks 
was veering, blown by gusts of passion. 

“ If he thought so — ” 

That was reason enough for Franpoise ; and 
for her mother too, for she said meekly : 


118 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


“ He thought so ; and when he asked me, I 
could give up my rights to his mother in her old 
age. Although I knew it would not do.” 

“ If he thought so, it must have been best.” 

Madame Jean slowly shook her head. She was 
not conscious of the movement. She was only 
conscious of how often her Jean’s impetuous, un- 
considered will had gone astray. For when Jean 
had wanted anything, he had wanted it abso- 
lutely ; he would never stop to question nor to 
weigh. From the time he had wooed the young 
widow in hot haste, putting aside his brother’s 
leisurely beginnings, sweeping her as it were from 
all her moorings, in his vehemence — 

“ If he thought so, it must have been best,” 
the daughter was saying. 

And Madame Jean locked her lips upon those 
memories of hers. 

“ That is all over now, mignonne. What we 
have to do now is to arrange our lives for tho 
present.” 

“And for the present, mamma, to do as 
Marie said : to leave me the week out here, to — 
to get used to things — and to — to be made pre- 
sentable.” 

She said this with such a clear imitation of 
Marie’s voice and manner, that Madame Jean, 
who was not without the fear of Marie before her 
eyes, faltered. 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


119 


Frank saw her advantage, and pressed it ; 
which perhaps she would not have done, but for 
her mother’s hesitation. 

At any rate, she got the week ; Marie’s prom- 
ise was confirmed when her mother turned to go 
away. 

Franyoise, as she went, stood in the doorway, 
looking after the graceful, slightly drooping 
figure with its fluttering black draperies against 
the gray twilight. Her mother’s kiss was warm 
upon her lips. 

“ One takes more flies with honey than with 
vinegar,” old Marguite said, proverbially, over 
her shoulder, watching the black draperies too. 

Frank made no answer ; only turned away, 
and appropriated the old woman’s spinning- 
wheel, which she set briskly in motion. She fell 
to humming, with a touch of defiance of tears in 
her voice, as she drew out the shining thread : 

“ Le grandp&re et la grand ’mere, 

Ils avaiont danse ze deux tout vie-“ 

Dansez, fils, et accordez, fi’, 

Epargnez pas vos souliers — ” 


120 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


IX. 

“ Little Ellie sits alone 
’Mid the beeches of a meadow, 

By a stream-side, on the grass ; 

And the trees are showering down 
Doubles of their leaves in shadow 
On her shining hair and face. 

She has thrown her bonnet by, 

And her feet she has been dipping 
In the shallow water’s flow — 

Now she holds them nakedly 
In her hands, all sleek and dripping, 

While she rocketh to and fro.” 

Just this one more day of freedom ! 

The girl was saying this to herself, determined 
to make the most of it. A thoroughly idle day ; 
not even a pretense of a book, to lend it a sensible 
and profitable air. For monsieur le docteur was 
away : what was the use of reading ? 

She sauntered lightly through the wood, swing- 
ing the little green and white Indian basket of 
sweet-hay that held the lunch she had wheedled out 
of tante Marguite. She thought of the old woman 
gratefully ; hut for her, would she still be free to 
spend this last day in dreaming the golden hours 
away, as in the olden time ? 

The olden time lay less than a year behind 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


121 


her ; yet it seemed very long ago, so much had 
happened since. 

Here she was, pushing her way up the stony 
hollow where she had first seen Kendal flounder- 
ing in the stream. But how altered since then ! 
The very stream in its course babbled of change, 
as it poured now in full flood over the rocks be- 
tween which it had dribbled months ago. The 
stepping-stones which she had used that evening, 
were submerged ; the long, shingly beeches were 
nowhere to be seen, and the clear brown water 
pressed up nearly to the rolled green border of 
the alder-thicket : 

11 Summer is i-cumin’, 

Loude singe cuckoo — ” 

Frank could hear the songster very plainly 
from the old barrens beyond the alder-brake. 

So much was in those barrens ! The birds, 
the thrushes and the warblers, delight in them — 
and so indeed do the bears, though they prefer 
the more secluded ones, for their peaceful banquet 
on the fragrant strawberries, the red raspberries, 
and the big blueberries with the bloom upon them, 
so plentifully spread amid the fire-weed. The 
wild fruits spring up fast in the open, where for- 
est-fire on forest-fire has cleared and cleared again 
the way for a rotation of such crops. And Frank 
knew where the asters and the ferns and pitcher- 


122 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


plant grow best, and the sweet little pink-and- 
white “ twin-sisters ” trail close to the ground, 
at the edge of the damp old hard-wood belt that 
had refused to burn. The “ twin-sisters ” — “ Mcl- 
erente-and-Anne,” she had always called them. 
All these things drew her across to them irre- 
sistibly. 

But how ? There were the stepping-stones ; 
but there, also, was the water over them. 

Eran9oise looked at it and looked at them, and 
ended by sitting down on the pebbled bank of the 
stream, and in a moment springing up again, her 
skirts kilted about her, her shoes and stockings 
in her hand, and a pair of the prettiest little white 
feet in the world twinkling through the sunny 
reach of water on the stepping-stones. 

Once she slipped on the smooth- worn rock, 
but recovered herself instantly. It was more than 
an instant, however, before she found out that, in 
righting her balance, she had let fall not only her 
freshly gathered tuft of bluebells, but one of the 
shoes tucked, as she thought, safely under her arm. 

She did not know, until her careless glance 
was caught by something bobbing up and down 
upon the eddy. An odd little black boat, that 
had a bluebell nodding in it, by way of passenger. 
At least that is how it gets itself described pres- 
ently. 

But first, she sprang to a stone nearer, and 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


123 


readied out after it in such haste that she jeop- 
ardized her footing again. She might have lost 
it altogether, with the great start she gave, when 
round the bend a canoe shot past her, in the nar- 
row channel. 

She had reached the nearest bank in haste 
before she saw the man in the canoe was Dallas 
Fraser. Less than a moment, and he had capt- 
ured her runaway craft, and was presenting it to 
her with a remark as to its sailing qualities. 

But the girl had made herself deftly ready to 
dispossess the bluebell, and thrust her trim little 
blue-woolen-stockinged foot into its place. Dal- 
las tried not to watch the operation too fixedly, 
but steadied the canoe on his pole among the ed- 
dies, as he said : 

“ And so at last I have found you again ! ” 

“ It comes like March in Lent, monsieur,” she 
said coolly — “to find me in the woods.” 

“And I did not know that ! I have been 
watching village and road for a trace of you ; have 
even been down to your school-room among the 
rapids — ” 

“ With your fine ladies from the house ? ” 

“ My fine ladies ! ” 

“ Oh, well, they are yours,” she said, lightly, 
“ in the sense of being at hand there for your idle 
moments, when the serious business of fishing is 
over for the day. I am glad I was not in my 


124 : 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


school-room, as you call it, when you brought 
them there. They would have found me in the 
way.” 

“It was not I who brought them there. 
Every one goes down to see the wells in the foot- 
rocks. But why should they have found you in 
the way ? ” 

“ They always have. ” 

“ They always have ?” 

Frank flushed scarlet. "What was she saying ? 
Telling her family secrets to this stranger ! 

“They always have?” he repeated. And 
then, catching inspiration from the rush of 
color which dyed the round white throat and 
the fair outline of her cheek, as she turned her 
head aside — 

“Except Frank!” he cried. “This Frank 
de Landremont — this youth whom I have chanced 
to hear his sisters mention once or twice, but 
who seems somehow mysteriously invisible to his 
guests — this Frank finds himself in your way very 
often, does he not ?” 

A puzzled glance from under the long, dark 
lashes, at first ; and then a sudden smile dimpling 
about the corner of her mouth. 

“ Very often — ” demurely. 

“And — come, confess — it is on this Frank’s 
account that the ladies up at the house — ” 

He hesitated there. Of course, he could not 


A. LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 125 

echo her own words of a moment ago. But while 
he hesitated, she said, coolly : 

“ Find me in the way ? Yes, truly ; on ac- 
count of Frank.” 

“ You must know him very well, indeed !” 

“ But yes, I suppose I must. Rather better 
than any one else does, at least.” 

“ And — no doubt you are fond of him ?” 

The words escaped him in a little outburst of 
jealous impatience, which perhaps he did not un- 
derstand himself, and certainly the girl did not. 
She answered in an off-hand way : 

“ Oh, yes, indeed ! Only — isn’t it odd ? — I 
do get just a little tired sometimes of the constant 
companionship. You like to get rid of everybody 
sometimes, you know ; and to have any one per- 
petually haunting you — ” 

“Fm unlucky,” interposed Fraser, sardoni- 
cally. “ Fve not yet seen this ubiquitous Frank. 
Do you say the same thing to him of me ? ” 

She lifted her brows. 

“ Of you ! How could I, monsieur ? Me, who 
have met you but three times and two halves ?” 

“ Three times and two halves ! ” he repeated, 
laughing at her computation. “Pray, how is 
that ? I am sure my memory is at least as good 
as yours upon that subject, and I am ready to 
swear to thrice. As for the half-times — ” 

“But that was when the meeting was only 


126 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


half-way ; all on one side, monsieur understands ? 
First, on that same day of the great arrival at the 
house : the carriages were rolling up to the gate, 
and I was hiding behind the beaucoup — ” 

“ The beaucoup ? ” 

“Qa! I mean what old Niel MacNiel calls 
the muckle rain-cask, at the corner of the house. 
I was standing there, watching monsieur.” 

She was unconscious of the subtle flattery in 
the admission, or her next words might have had 
more meaning in them, and not have been said 
quite carelessly : 

“You know it is something to see any stran- 
ger at all. Or you would know, if you lived 
w r ith tante Marguite.” 

“Poor child, it is a weary life, then ?” 

“ Oh, not to say weary ; only the same thing, 
always the same thing over and over again. It 
is the song of the Korils, those elfish dwarfs away 
in old Bretagne.” And she began to sing : 

11 Lindi, mardi, mercredi, 

Lindi, mardi, mercredi — ” 

Dallas Fraser glanced at her quickly, when 
she began, the clear voice like a bird’s piercing 
through the woodland solitudes. 

If he had only told her at first that he was 
not absolutely alone here, as she doubtless sup- 
posed him — that nearly the whole house-party 


A LITTLE MAID OE ACADIE. 


127 


had wandered out here, canoeing, fishing, camp- 
ing out, as such a party can merrily enough, in 
the skirts of the forest. 

But as he looked at her now, it was impossi- 
ble for him to speak a word of warning. It would 
be an impertinence. Why should he warn her ? 
Was not the forest her cathedral, to sing matins 
in, as the birds were singing them ? 

Nevertheless, from idly toying with his 
paddle in the water, he suddenly shot out 
into the middle of the stream, as the sound 
of voices reached him round a bend in the alder- 
thicket. 

When Fran9oise turned her head, it seemed to 
her there was a flash of color that dazzled her 
eyes. 

A loaded bateau sweeping down the stream ; 
a glow of scarlet draperies, as here and there a 
shawl trailed almost in the water ; a flutter of 
blue-gauze veils and ribbons ; a startled exclama- 
tion : 

“Frank !” 

There was Arsene staring across at her, out of 
the bateau ; for once surprised into taking the 
initiative, as Marie sat in the bow, struck speech- 
less by the sight. 

But Marie could not be struck speechless for 
long. 

“It is my little sister,” she said, rapidly, to 


128 A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 

her neighbors in the boat. “I did not suppose 
she could be with us yet. To-morrow she was 
promised to us ; not to-day. You did not know ? 
But that seems strange ! I thought every one 
knew. What a good child, Frank, to come and 
join our party ! ” she cried, putting out her hand 
to the girl, as the boat pushed in among the 
bushes on the margin where she stood. 

Frank ! 

Dallas in his canoe sat staring at her as if the 
sun-dazzle blinded his eyes. 

Marie, glancing round her with a helpless air, 
started slightly, as if she saw him for the first 
time. 

“Mr. Fraser! so here you are! I suppose 
this wild little singing-bird of ours drew you here 
as she drew us ? I was going to say we were in a 
difficulty ; but now that you are here, I may hope 
that we are out of it. The truth is, our bateau 
is too full — ” 

“But my canoe is at your service,” cried the 
young man, eagerly. 

“ Mr. Fraser, this is my sister Frank, of whom 
you have heard us speak. And, Frank, Mr. Fra- 
ser is our cousin, more or less removed — ” 

“ ‘ Who drags at each remove a lengthening 
chain/ ” said Dallas, as he pushed his canoe along- 
side. “That is the worst of these cousinships. 
The best of them is, we have a better claim than 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 129 

the outside world to be called on to do cousinly 
offices.” 

“Then you will take Frank on board, Mr. 
Fraser ? And let me come, too ; the bateau is 
rather crowded, and your canoe holds three, I 
think ? ” 

She made the exchange lightly and swiftly ; 
but Frank was holding back. 

“ But, Marie, tante Marguite ? She will make 
me a beau sabbat, if I stay away, and she does 
not know.” 

“And mamma? Yes, I understand your 
scruples,” Marie returned, giving the girl a warn- 
ing glance not to be too expansive. “ One of the 
guides, however, is going back to the village from 
our camp, and we’ll send word to mother and 
nurse how we have carried you off. Come, 
child.” 

The pretty, imperious air of elder-sisterly au- 
thority set very gracefully on the beautiful young 
woman, who from amidships in the canoe was 
holding out her hands toward Fran$oise. 

But it was Dallas who helped her in, saying 
as he did so, under his breath : 

“And this is Frank ! ” 

“ My neom is Marie Fran9oise,” the girl an- 
swered, demurely. 

But there was dimpling sunshine in her face ; 
sunshine and brightness everywhere, as the stream 
9 


130 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


swept merrily on, and beyond the Fourche the 
camping-ground came into view. 

To Franyoise it was laughable enough, the 
eagerness with which the men were all gathered 
into a knot on the beach at the water’s edge : one 
tall, brown-bearded fisherman leaning on his rod 
with one hand, while in the other he held up to 
view the trophy of that rod — a gleaming salmon, 
a twenty-five-pounder ; at sight of which the 
sportsman next him let his dwarfed trout trail 
ignominiously on the ground as he stood. Fran- 
9oise brightened and nodded as she caught sight 
of a familiar figure behind him. “ That is old 
Mande Pig- Eyes,” she explained to Fraser. “ He 
is from down Tobique-way ; he’s one of the very 
best of the guides, Pacifique says.” , 

But how they are all got up to play at 
work ! all, indeed, but that veritable sportsman, 
Mande Pig-Eyes. Pacifique was wont to grumble 
at the trouble when now and again he would de- 
scend below the falls, and up one or other of the 
tributary streams, in search of salmon, trout, or 
pointu noir ; and here were these men making 
game of toil, and turning their backs upon civili- 
zation — for a lark, as Dallas Fraser would say. 
And the fine ladies too ; some of them filling with 
color the doorway of the big tent on the bank 
above ; two or three of them just stepping from 
the bateau beached a moment later than the canoe. 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


131 


“ You must come and speak to Mrs. Osborne, 
Frank,” Marie said, at once. “It is she who is 
matronizing ns : yonder hero of the big fish — 
salmon is it, you say ? — is her husband. — Ah, 
thanks, Mr. Fraser ; now we are both out dry- 
shod, we’ll run up the bank, and leave you the 
canoe.” 

Marie, as she drew her little sister’s arm within 
hers, was wondering why she had not before so 
clearly seen how charming the young creature 
was. She was in her own place out here in the 
woods : blooming and free and natural, where 
others, some of them, were looking and feeling 
rather artificial. Marie was quite taken by sur- 
prise ; no longer shy, and as unconscious as a 
child, Frank went flitting here, there, everywhere, 
helping in the camping preparations ; even stop- 
ping to hold the tent-cord for Mande Pig-Eyes, 
while on the sly he makes the sign of the cross 
over the knot, that it may hold. 


132 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


X. 

“Yes, I will say what mere friends say — 

Or only a thought stronger ; 

I will hold your hand but as long as all may — 

Or so very little longer.” 

“ Mademoiselle ! What are you doing 
here ? ” 

She was on her knees in the bateau , her arms 
crossed on the gunwale. She threw a laughing 
glance oyer her shoulder upon Dallas Fraser as 
he spoke to her. 

“ Doing ? Repeating the paternoster of Saint 
Do-nothing : that is what tante Marguite says I 
am usually about. You may come and help me, 
if you will : the saint has many followers in this 
camp.” 

He came down to her, where the boat was 
drawn up on the stony beach ; and as he stood 
beside her, he could see what had brought her 
there. 

The trees bordering the stream stood aside to 
give the water room, and so left a clear view of 
the northern sky. 

It was all glorious with northern lights — fold 
on translucent fold of green and white and crim- 
son flapping and veering about, as if blown to 
and fro in a strong wind. 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


133 


“ One can almost hear the rustle, as the cur- 
tains sweep aside. It seems as if they must open 
straight up into heaven ! ” said the girl’s low 
voice. 

Dallas had seated himself on the gunwale, not 
far from where she leaned : it must be confessed 
his eyes were oftener on the dainty profile turned 
to him, than on any thing heaven-like. 

“ May be heaven is not so far off, after all ? ” 
she ventured presently, in the same low, half- 
awed tone. “ Bonhomme Pacifique says there 
are birds that can find the way to the upper sea 
beyond the clouds — the Sea of Glass, in paradise, 
you know. I wonder if they could carry a mes- 
sage there ? Only, it is an answer we would 
want. And that, perhaps, would not be what we 
would be glad to hear.” 

He could not follow her thought, as Kendal 
might ; nor divine that she was fancying the 
grandmere’s look de haut en bas, if she should 
hear of Madame Jean in the De Landremont 
homestead, and little Fran$uaise out here with a 
gay party from there. 

“ Mats oui , I am going in. It is quite late, 
I am afraid — ” the girl broke the silence by way 
of closing her ear to the scornful little laugh she 
could fancy floating down to her through those 
swaying curtain-folds. For grandmamma would 
be much the same up there, suppose ! “ The 


134 : 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


lights up yonder are deceiving one can not tell, 
sometimes, if sunset is fading, or the aurora begin- 
ning, when the whole sky is colored like this. 
And Marie will be looking for me back to supper. 
I hope monsieur is hungry ? ” she said, with a 
friendly nod. “ For I’ve wheedled old Mande 
Pig-Eyes into letting me make the bread, in- 
stead of his endless great thick buckwheat-cakes. 
And let me tell monsieur, though I say it that 
shouldn’t, my bread is well good, if it hasn’t 
been kneaded by an angel, like the baker’s of 
Saint Matthieu.” 

There was something too “fey” to be angelic 
in the laughing, upturned face ; nor, evi- 
dently, was she looking for the hackneyed com- 
pliment which Dallas knew better than to pay 
her. 

Instead, he was avowing himself ready even 
for Mande’s buckwheats smothered in maple- 
sirup ; how much more for mademoiselle’s handi- 
work ! “For the buckwheat-cakes have grown 
slightly monotonous ; even that wonderful dish 
of the nursery jingle would, if set before the king 
too often, don’t you know ? ” 

Fran^ise did know — Mother Goose having 
been instrumental in her early English educa- 
tion. But she was vehement in defense of the 
buckwheat, which the first Acadians had brought 
with them from Bretagne. Yet monsieur, look 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


135 


yon, must not suppose there is nothing else that 
will flourish here : this very autumn, tcld voine , 
bonhomme Pacifique expects to gather in, besides 
potatoes, four or five hundred bushels of nevaux — 
“ et p’is il tchuillera du bledad, de Vaouen — ” 

Fran9oise had dropped into French, in her 
eagerness, as a certain personage known to fame 
dropped into poetry ; but she stopped suddenly, 
seeing the blank of her companion’s face. 

“Ah, bah!” she said, with a shrug; “mon- 
sieur is like Marie, he can understand no French 
but of the books. Monsieur will not get that, 
among nous autres acadiens. Unless sometimes 
from the old books, indeed : we broke ofl with 
the Grand Monarque.” 

It was rather a matter-of-fact conversation, to 
be carried on under the stars and the palpitating 
northern lights ; but grain, and turnips even, may 
borrow interest from a pair of red lips and two 
bright eyes. Dallas Fraser was impatient enough 
of the interruption, when he saw Marie come 
sauntering down toward them, by the path the 
turf began to show for these few days of camping 
here. 

Fran£oise did not see — her back was toward 
the path. 

“ Let us go and superintend our chef Mande,” 
Dallas proposed, quickly. “It will never do to 
have that bread spoiled in the baking. Come ; 


136 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


you owe it to me not to balk me of the promised 
feast.” 

He strolled off leisurely with her, crossing the 
open space in a direction not to face Marie. “ Mrs. 
Grundy,” he was calling her to himself, honestly 
forgetting that it was half for the sake of her 
bright eyes that he had found the Dallas kinship 
so easy to trace on shipboard, and the De Landre- 
mont house quite in the road of his Canadian 
tour. 

Marie stood looking after them with a faint 
smile, recognizing his sudden shortness of vision. 
There was no bitterness in the smile, only a little 
bland cynicism. 

So Miss Innocence was quite capable of 
her own bit of flirtation ? — and could be 
trusted, unassisted, to forget her monsieur le 
docteur who reminded her so much of “ TJncle 
Frank ! ” 

“We are all alike, we women,” Marie was 
saying to herself, half scornful, half complacent. 
“ And a good thing, too — for the women. But 
not for the John Kendals, when once in a while a 
John Kendal occurs. Ah, bah ! what does it 
matter ? — the John Kendals have the best of life, 
after all ; they carve out their own way, and, 
whether they succeed or fail, they hate lived. 
While we women — oh, we women think we take 
our fate in our own hands ! And if we do, once 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


137 


in a way, we can’t keep hold of it ; we’re afraid 
or ashamed to keep hold of it, and so we let it 
drop out of our slack grasp.” 

She let her hands fall slowly apart before her, 
with a gesture of surrender. And then she 
laughed a little, mockingly. 

“Let it drop? Ah, but he will think they 
grasp at his fast enough, now that his are no 
longer empty and poor. But must he think so ? 
I am no fool, to play my part so ill as that. If I 
can not manage better than that, I might as well 
still be silly little Mary Smith, as she was before 
these dozen years were her schoolmasters to train 
her into Marie de Landremont. And even silly 
little Mary Smith was not so silly as that. No, 
no ; it shall go well.” 

The blood had come back to her cheeks, the 
sparkle to her eyes, as she strolled on into the 
light from a great fire of logs piled in the midst 
of the encampment. It threw a ruddy glow far 
round, beyond which the woodland belt loomed 
the darker from the contrast, now that the au- 
rora was beginning to flicker out. But in the 
center, where the brightness was concentrated, a 
small figure went flitting to and fro, about the 
wide-mouthed oven. 

The red-hot coals from the huge fire had been 
heaped inside it, and then raked out again, and 
the bread— -Frank’s bread— put in to bake. And 


138 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


now it was drawn out, a very triumph of light- 
ness and whiteness and brown-crustiness. 

The first bit must be broken off for Dallas. 

He took it quite gravely, and began to munch 
like a hungry schoolboy, declaring that never was 
there bread like this before. 

Frank stood and watched him with an air of 
satisfaction, her hands folded placidly before her. 

“ Je sus ben benaise,” she said, complacently. 
“It might have been baked pas leong assiz, you 
know ; or overbaked — ” 

“ Hard as a stone ? Yes, I know. Will you 
always be so good to me, mademoiselle ? When 
I ask you for bread, will you never give me a 
stone ? ” 


XI. 


“ Strawberry leaves and May-dew 
In brisk morning air, 

Strawberry-leaves and May-dew 
Make maidens fair.” 

“ Comme^t-ce vous portez ’hord’hui ?” cried 
the girl, standing still with a courtesy, and a laugh 
in her blue eyes. 

It was far up the bend of the stream. Dallas 
Fraser, paddling along its course, and expecting 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


139 


to bring back a string of breakfast trout, bad 
looked for nothing better lying in wait for him. 
And so the girl was a surprise. 

Not that she had been lying in wait for him ; 
she was as much taken by surprise as he. 

“ It is the last morning,” she said, half apolo- 
getically. “ And it is a shame to lose so much of 
the bright day as they do, Marie and the rest. I 
stole out for a long ramble. I shall be back be- 
fore they are half ready for breakfast.” 

“Not sleepless, eh, mademoiselle, and tired 
of the rude camp-life ?” 

“ Me, I always sleep like a sabot. And tired 
of camp-life in a week ? Yes, when the week of 
three Thursdays is come. Softly, monsieur, you 
will have the canoe aground.” 

“ Can’t be helped,” he asserted, running it into 
the bit of bank where she was standing. “ There 
is a mysterious magnetic current hereabout ; my 
compass is all astray ; no use in trying to steer 
away. No, you don’t understand, not being nau- 
tical. But it's very easily explained. Not while 
you stand aloof there ; you must come into the 
canoe. No, you will never get that dead trail of 
bramble disentangled from your dress without my 
help. And that’s a perfectly impervious thicket 
just beyond you. You will have to go back the 
way you came, unless you take to the canoe.” 

She let him hand her in : how could she help 


MO 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


it, with the sun slanting over the freshening water 
running in blue and gold and airy lines of foam 
where the breeze strikes it ; and the green woods 
crowding down to the very brink, where they can 
not stop themselves before a branch trails here 
and there upon the swaying current ? 

And there is the praiseworthy sense of being 
up and doing, while the tents behind are plunged 
in drowsiness. Nothing could be more meritori- 
ous in the eyes of the whole camp, than this lay- 
ing up of silver treasure against their wakening. 
At one time, Dallas was catching the trout as fast 
as he could drop his flies upon the water. 

Yet the treasure did not seem to accumulate 
so very rapidly. Dallas was puzzled — until, turn- 
ing suddenly, he caught Fran^ise in the act of 
leaning softly over the water, letting a young 
quarter-of-a-pounder flash, with a lively flick of 
his tail through her slim fingers, back into his 
element. 

“ Frank !” 

In his angry astonishment, he does not know 
how he has called her, 

“ Ah, par exemple ! ” she says, looking straight 
at him with a defiant shrug, her eyes flashing, her 
color rising. 

She is taking it so seriously, that Dallas laughs 
outright. 

“Are you furthering sport? Have your 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 141 

boasted trout-streams so few fish, that you are 
providing me with the same to take over and over 
again ? That may be fun to you, but I doubt it 
is to the trout.” 

She shrugs her shoulder again. 

“Best leave the trout and me to arrange that. 
All you have to do is to catch them. You bade 
me take care of them. I am doing it, you see. 
You know our saying, ‘ Where every one minds 
one’s affairs, the cows are well kept.’ ” 

“And where is that? In this lucky coun- 
try ?” 

“ But no ! ” She shakes her head at him gay- 
ly. “ In the pays de sapience : that must be Nor- 
mandy, you know, where I get my yellow head. 
Though after all I am less normande than bre- 
tonne.” 

“ And American, too ? At least, I have heard 
your sister speak as if she were at home in the 
States.” 

“Marie is different.” She did not explain 
how, but went on presently : 

“Mamma was born in the States, in St. Louis, 
where Marie went to school. But then, all mam- 
ma’s people were Acadian, carried by the Eng- 
lish ships down into les Louisianes, at the time 
of the dispersal, when all Evangeline’s people 
were scattered to the winds along the coast. The 
Thibodeaux — (I’ve heard a parish down there still 


142 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


bears that name) — some of them went higher up 
the great river, to the new settlement at St. Louis, 
to which, then, les Louisianes stretched up. Oh, 
grandmamma has told me all about it. She wished 
to show me how I must be all acadienne, after 
all. And the Thibodeaux never altogether lost 
sight of their kindred here. When mamma was 
quite a young girl, she came and spent a summer 
on the St. John ; most of it with grandmamma. 
It was very gay that summer in the old house ; 
it must have been like this.” 

Dallas Fraser checked a smile. He had found 
it dull enough there at the house. “But then 
there was the Thibodeaux-de-Landremont romance 
going on,” he said, tentatively. 

That was true enough ; but so much of it as 
Frank knew she was silent upon : otherwise, she 
was chattering away freely enough. Dallas dis- 
covered that she believed in the reality of the 
poet’s Evangeline, and was ready to show him at 
home, as proof, a prose French version of the 
poem, which had belonged to grandmamma. 
“And Evangeline — pas si bete , moi ! — Evange- 
line, to run over the universe after a Gabriel who 
for his part was amusing himself very well with 
his buying and his selling, and put her in the 
rank of forgotten sins, to be recalled on his death- 
bed ! Though grandmamma would never have 
let me say that ! ” 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


143 


She ended with a smile and a half sigh, re- 
membering how little grandmamma had ever let 
her say. But that she did not add ; though it 
did not occur to her how freely already she was 
talking to this stranger. 

It did not occur to her that he was a stranger ; 
with such responsive good-fellowship was he list- 
ening, and looking at her in his eager way, as he 
let the canoe drift with the stream. 

It is so easy to drift, .without a thought of the 
way back ; without a thought of whither one is 
being borne on in the sunshine, when the trees 
and blossoming shrubs are alike at every bend, 
and the same ferns and mosses stoop down for the 
clear brown ripple to wash through them ; and 
when one is looking into a pair of eyes as blue and 
bright as the morning. 

It was just then that the current twisted the 
canoe round unawares into the branching stream 
that ran dancing and dimpling mischievously 
away with these careless voyageurs, into the very 
heart of the wood. 


144 


A LITTLE MAID OF AGADIR 


XII. 

“ Song-birds of passage, days of youth.” 

The merry, dimpling, mischievous stream 
might do what it would with them both : neither 
Franqoise nor Dallas was heeding the way. When 
they came to the forks, and the current twisted 
them round, he was telling her of sailing up the 
great sea-lochs at home. 

“ In England ? ” 

“ What, you take me for a southron, with my 
Scottish name, forbye my gude Scots tongue ? ” 

“ Mais oui, I took you for the rich, rich Eng- 
lish cousin — ” 

Dallas laughed outright ; but the girl saw 
nothing either to laugh at, or to be embarrassed 
by. She sat trailing her hand in the water, look- 
ing at him with a puzzled air, until he had ex- 
plained. 

“ It is not that I am, but that I had, a rich, 
rich English cousin. Otherwise I should have 
had no more gear than the unlucky Master of 
Ravenswood, without a Caleb Balderstone to keep 
up the credit of the house. And being only a 
cousin, and so with no great expectations, I had, 
don’t you know, to make my own way in the 
world.” 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


145 


“ By way of the sea-lochs ? ” she inquired, mis- 
chievously. 

“ That was earlier. I dare say the roughing 
it helped to train me in the way I — rather stum- 
bled into than chose. You see, I chanced to be 
abroad — ” 

“ Oh, yes, I know, making the Grand Tour,” 
Frank put in, with a wise nod. She remembered 
reading about the Grand Tour in that old-time 
diary which grandmamma had laid hands on, as 
she told Kendal. 

Dallas stared, and then he laughed. 

“ It was not exactly the grand tour ; rather, 
a tramp abroad. I was doing it on foot, knap- 
sack on back, and sometimes a forced march and 
a hungry one, if a lean purse made half-rations : 
when I chanced to stumble on the genuine thing, 
the knapsack-and-forced-march gentry. It was 
on the borders of the inexpressible Turk, down 
by Bosnia and Herzegovina, where all was in the 
tumult of war. And so I — ” 

Frank’s dripping hand flashed up out of the 
water and clasped the other eagerly. 

“ You became a soldier ! ” 

A soldier, a hero, she might have said ; her 
eyes spoke for her. 

Dallas reddened, and threw her a disconcerted 
glance. 

“ I became — a newspaper correspondent.” 

10 


146 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


“Oh!” Her face fell. 

Dallas’s, also. He paddled on without speak- 
ing, staring dully down into the water for one 
moment of profound discouragement, before he 
plucked up heart of grace to prove to her that 
newspaper correspondents can be heroes as well as 
soldiers. 

He did not take himself and his own exploits 
for the text of his proof ; it was clear that he pres- 
ently forgot himself, in telling of the daring of a 
certain well-known countryman of his. It was 
not his fault if the girl, listening eager-eyed, and 
with the quick blood flickering in her cheeks, saw 
two bold adventurers where the story-teller named 
but one. 

She drew a long, deep breath, when they 
reached that crest of the Balkans, and saw the 
battle going on beneath them, in the mountain 
mists. 

“Oh, and is that being a newspaper corre- 
spondent ? and I who thought you must be a sol- 
dier to be a hero ! Eh, you must be as brave — ” 

He colored high. 

“ * I the little hero of each tale ? 9 But I was 
not speaking of myself.” 

She nodded at him confidently. 

“ As if I did not know ; as if I could not tell ! 
Et p’is ? — go on ! ” impatient of the interrup- 
tion. 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


147 


It is not in man, from Othello’s day to Dallas 
Fraser’s, to tell a story the more coldly because a 
Desdemona listens : 

“ ‘She loved me for the dangers I had passed, 

And I loved her that she did pity them,’ ” 


Dallas presently caught himself saying, under his 
breath. 

“What is that, Mr. Fraser ? Tell me again. 
I won’t lose anything that happened.” 

He looked at her with a quizzical gleam in his 
eyes, half laughter, half embarrassment. 

“ But I am not at all sure it happened — the 
first part of it, I mean.” 

“ Is it that you have been telling me some- 
thing that did not actually happen ? And I list- 
ening and believing all, trying of all my best to 
remember the vatz, and niks, and nitzas of those 
dreadful names ! ” 

“Will you really remember anything about 
them and me?” he cried. “May I, indeed, 
hope you will not forget me altogether ? ” 

“ Monsieur took care to prevent that, the first 
time we met,” she said, dryly. 

She caught hold of the chain about her throat, 
and drew out a round and shining something 
which had been hidden under her kerchief’s 
folds. 


148 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


“ Monsieur remembers this ?” 

He stared at the coin ; then, with a rush of 
blood to his face, put out his hand confusedly. 

“ Give it me. How shall I ever explain ? 
What a fool, what a fool I was ! and that you 
should keep the remembrance of my folly like 
that ! No, you must give it back.” 

For she was slowly settling it again into its 
hiding-place under the white muslin folds. 

She shook her head at him, laughing. 

“Folly ? But why should it have been folly ? 
Unless, indeed, a sixpence might have done ?” 

“ Frank ! ” 

The hurt tone checked her at once. She just 
touched his sleeve lightly, with a friendly nod. 

“ But I won’t have a sixpence instead of it. 
I won’t have anything but just this that you have 
given me. I mean to keep it, and wear it, since 
it has the most convenient hole to hold my bit of 
chain. ” 

After all, need he feel unalloyed annoyance 
that she wore his gift ? It was half doubtfully 
that he said again : 

“I wish you would let me have it back.” 

But he seemed to' have lost her attention. She 
was glancing about her ; the sun looked higher 
than it should be, as it filtered through the 
branches overhead. 

“We certainly have come too far. I am 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 14.9 

afraid your trout will hardly be for breakfast. 
We must turn.” 

What can be easier ? The stream was run- 
ning merrily, hurrying them along. When, on 
a sudden, the girl turned on Dallas with a sharp 
ring in her voice : 

“ The alders ! We never came this way.” 

There they are, the alders : no longer a rolled 
edge along the border of the river ; but a choking 
brake, laying branches low upon the glossy sur- 
face, leaning together across it. 

Back the canoe went, to avoid them ; up and 
down another silvery loop : presently entangled 
in just such another network. 

But there was the tinkle of clear water ahead : 
the day had grown so still, it could be heard. 

“The river is calling to us,” Dallas said, 
cheerily. “ We’ll try if this branch is a guide 
to it.” 

Not a very willing guide, apparently ; thrust- 
ing obstacles of overlapping boughs in the way, 
until the two voyagers had to lean low in the ca- 
noe, abandon pole and paddle, and grope through 
the green smother by catching at the boughs 
overhead, and so pulling themselves along. 

When with the last pull they shot out into 
the widened stream rushing clear and free over 
its rocky bed, the sense of relief was so great that 
it left them leisure to discover it was long past 


150 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


breakfast-time, and nothing could be better than 
a trout broiled on the pebbly beach. Francjoise 
must heap a platter of green leaves with fragrant 
red wild berries on the border of the wood. 
“Now, if we had that plump wild pigeon — ” 

But FranQoise put herself between Dallas 
and the canoe, in the bottom of which lay his 
gun. 

“It is not loaded ? I am glad. I won't have 
the birds shot. If we only had some tea, now, to 
keep it from being a dry repas de brebis ! ” 

There was the river-water, amber-clear, and 
sparkling over the pebbles in a rift of sunshine. 
Elsewhere the trees put their heads together to 
shut the two in, as if to make a happy secret of 
the hour that went by so fast. 

But, also, they shut out the sky ; there was 
no hint of how the day was changing, until a mut- 
ter of thunder told it. 

Fran§oise paled a little at the sound. “ Qa 
m’apeurit ! ” she said, startled into forgetting her 
English — “ ( la m'apeurit ! ” 

“ The thunder ? The only danger is of a 
wetting. That is bad enough for you. And see, 
here comes the first sharp patter on the leaves 
overhead. It is well that they are so thick. But 
we must find better shelter than this.” 

Happily it was not far to seek, when they 
pushed into the brushwood — a great, hollow 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACAD IE. 


151 


cedar, aged as if it might have been one of those 
into which the Indian wizard Glooscap metamor- 
phosed the two brothers who came begging from 
him length of days and strength and stature, all 
for themselves, and not to serve their fellow-men. 
This cedar served Fran9oise with a sort of sen- 
try-box refuge now, as Dallas told her. He stood 
leaning against the trunk, speaking to her en- 
couragingly from time to time, when there was a 
lull in the fury of the storm. 

“ This is pretty well in its way. But if you 
had ever seen what it can do, in this line, in 
India — ” 

Crash ! went the bushes, a stone’s-throw away. 
Frank clasped her hands and leaned forward : 
was it a tree flung down so close to this ? Dallas 
turned, and stared straight into a pair of black, 
fiery eyes. 

Stared straight into them, before he took in 
the shaggy black body hurling its cumbrous 
length over a fallen trunk — tearing through the 
vines, crashing down the branches ; his snarling 
lip curled up over the sharp white teeth, his 
hoarse bear’s growl thrilling the hush. 

There is not a moment. Dallas reaches out 
mechanically for his shot-gun leaning against the 
tree, unloaded as it is. 

Hot a moment ; but, when he turns again to 
fling himself forward between the brute and 


152 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


Fran$oise in her hiding-place, she stands before 
him. 

“ Frank !” 

A thunder-crash, that deadens his hoarse cry ; 
a lightning-glare, tearing the very heavens in 
two, and kindling all the glooming forest with a 
lurid glow, against which trunk and twig stand 
out in black, and the great black brute — 

The great black brute is cowering for fear ; 
like a whipped hound, is slinking away through 
the underbrush : as though that grand outburst of 
wrathful Nature were planned for his own indi- 
vidual confusion. 

And Franqoise and Dallas stood clasping 
hands, as if that outburst were for their own in- 
dividual salvation. 

Without a word. But what need could there 
be of words between them any more ? Dallas 
seemed to think that there was none, for present- 
ly he had her in his arms. 

When, glowing with confusion, she made a 
movement to withdraw herself, he released her at 
once. 

“ Sweetheart, I can let you go, because I have 
you fast ! You would have given your life for 
mine ? But don’t you know, then, Frank, that 
yours is mine ?” 

“I — it was only — it was all my fault — 55 
she stammered, blushing painfully. “For I 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


153 


would not let you load your gun this morn- 
ing.” 

He pulled out his powder-flask now, and pro- 
ceeded to load. 

“ Not that we will need it again ; the yery 
heavens — thank God — ■” he lifted his hat rever- 
ently — “ fought for us. Master Bruin will never 
venture to show his snarling black muzzle in this 
spot again.” 

He laughed a little unsteadily. “ It’s a case 
of ‘ after death the doctor,’ with these leaden pills 
of mine.” 

The doctor ! 

Frangoise’s lips whitened again. She stole a 
swift, guilty glance at this new lover of hers, 
standing bareheaded in the rain, a glow of tri- 
umph about him, a look of success, and confidence 
in fortune, and will to have his own way. 

“1 have you fast.” 

But he did not repeat it ; and if, in the hours 
that followed, he told her he loved her, it was only 
by a glance, or a thrill in some commonplace word. 
These, while they spoke plainly enough, need not 
frighten the poor little fluttered girl with press- 
ing for an answer. 

The storm soon raved itself out ; the sun, shin- 
ing toward its setting, beamed cheerfully upon 
the twisting streams that rushed on from their 
suddenly overflowing springs. The pebbled sand- 


154 : 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


bars, the wide beaches, were all hidden now ; 
Franchise and Dallas might float over them, with- 
out a recognition of the shallows which this morn- 
ing had threatened the canoe with grounding. 
When the forest-ways are water-ways, a deluge 
like this is sure to confuse them. 

Here and there the foliage made a dense roof 
overhead, shutting out the sun that might have 
given them some guidance as to the direction of 
the camp. But then, as Frank pointed out, his 
guidance was superfluous while the trees by the 
way gave them so many hints — the thickest moss 
upon the north side of the trunks, the heaviest 
spruce-boughs always on the south. 

They were hints which could not always be fol- 
lowed, however : the course of the streams often 
forbidding. For the canoe was not to be aban- 
doned, even when now and again the hoarse brawl- 
ing of a rapid threatened to stop the way. Then 
Dallas found the girl fearless and cool, and ready 
to do her part in steering, paddling quietly in the 
stern, while in the bow the skilled canoer was free 
to watch the current, his paddle grasped in his 
two hands, the blade straight under water, turned 
rudder-like now this way and now that. The 
water curling alongside, the handful of diamond- 
spray flung glittering into the sunshine, the gid- 
dy descent, and triumph of the floating into a 
smooth stretch beyond : the girl was glowing and 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


155 


sparkling with it all, and quite forgetting every- 
thing except the present moment. 

“ We shall come upon the camp itself present- 
ly, without knowing it,” Dallas declared, gayly, 
determined not to betray his anxiety at the situa- 
tion. “ It would be too bad to take them una- 
wares, in the midst of discussing us and our 
escapade ; les absens out toujours tort , you know. 
So I am going to fire a blank cartridge now and 
then, as our herald.” 

Would it be answered ? It was a forlorn hope ; 
and half a dozen times it failed. 

But on the seventh, there was a faint, far-away 
reverberation ; it might have been an echo, but 
an Irish one, that gave a cheery answer. 

When it was repeated again and yet again, the 
canoe was turned and headed for the sound ; al- 
though the sun pointed out the fact that it was 
.straight away from the direction in which the 
camp ought to lie. 


156 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


XIII. 


“ Ilelas, je sais un chant d’amour 
Triste ou gai tour k tour— 

Ce chant, qui de mon coeur s’61fcve, 

D’ou vient qu’en pleurunt je l’acheye ? ” 

Yokder, on the green bank, it is not the 
usual cozy cottage of the pioneer habitant , that 
stands with gayly paneled doors and sloping 
whitewashed roofs ; but the log-cabin of a lum- 
ber-camp, with wooden table nailed to the floor, 
and bunk-like beds against the wall. In one of 
these, on a mattress of springy spruce-boughs, 
was lying a lumberman with a leg fractured by 
the falling of a tree ; waiting, in what patience 
he might, for the doctor who had been sent for. 
His more patient wife was with him, and there was 
nothing for any one else to do. So Frangoise 
wandered out-of-doors ; smiling a little, tremu- 
lously, to herself, as she reflected that, in Dr. 
Kendal’s absence, the doctor must be the one 
down Tobique-way, who, according to bonhomme 
Pacifique, sends his patients so promptly on the 
short-cut into the other world. 

Far more desirable than the inside of the cabin, 
was the outside, with the softest of evening winds 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


157 


blowing, and the moon throwing its faint white 
light into the very midst of the sunset still glim- 
mering on the lake. 

It is a bit of winding water that well deserves 
its flowing Indian name, as it bends and turns be- 
tween the gaps of ferny hills stripped bare of tim- 
ber by the lumbermen. Just here, a ledge of 
broken rock runs out into the water, offering 
Fran^oise an elbow-chair, with the gleaming rip- 
ple twinkling at her feet. She thought she was 
well hidden there ; until at the sound of her own 
name she turned — to find Dallas leaning with 
arms folded on the high back of her chair. 

“ I have been looking for you every — ” 

He broke off ; surely there were tears in the 
eyes slowly averted from him ? 

“ Frank, you are not frightened? — you are 
not unhappy ? This is a safe bield until they come 
for us : which they may any hour, now that a 
messenger is gone to the camp. And that is a 
canny gudewife in yonder, who will have you in 
charge until your friends are here.” 

She answered nothing. Perhaps she was try- 
ing to steady her voice. 

It did not help her, that he swung himself 
over the ledge and stood beside her. 

“ Sweetheart, look up! Why do you turn 
from me ? Are you angry with me for what I 
said to you awhile ago ? ” 


158 A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 

She did look up now, not understanding. 
“ Awhile ago ?” 

He laughed rather unsteadily. 

“Do we keep up the French fashions here in 
the forest ? Ought I to wait for some one to 
speak for me ? Can I not say, in the straight- 
forward Saxon way : Frank, I love you ; be my 
wife ! ” 

The words might seem confident ; the voice 
was not, the eyes were not, though he had taken 
her hands masterfully in his. 

She hardly heard him. She was not, indeed, 
thinking of him. 

She had come out here to fight her battle by 
herself : that battle which her mother had given 
up in a cowardly fashion Franyoise had so scorned. 

Her lip curled now ; but it was in scorn of 
herself, not of her mother. “‘ Blood can not 
lie/ grandmamma always said — ” 

She turned to Dallas in a passion of haste, 
snatching her hands away. 

“ I am not going back to the camp. I am go- 
ing home to my mother. My mother ! She can 
understand, she can forgive.” 

“Frank — Frank, my darling — ” 

She had started to her feet ; her face was 
white, her whole frame was in a quiver. 

“No — not that, not that ! It can not matter 
to you long. For what am I but a poor little. 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


159 


ignorant girl, unfit — But I will go back to my 
mother. She will understand.” 

She moved away sharply, as if to seek her 
mother that same moment. She pushed past 
Dallas, and round beyond the elbow of that ledge 
of rock. 

In her hurry to escape — not from Dallas only, 
but from herself, ready enough to play the traitor 
and yield to him — it did not work against her, 
that beyond that ledge they were no longer alone. 
Three men were coming down the hill that bris- 
tled with the ghosts of dead trees, some of them 
girdled and white as birch-stems, others charred 
and blackened by old forest-fires. 

Foremost was the guide, who stepped out 
briskly ahead : a grotesque figure, with head and 
shoulders thrust forward out of the canoe slung 
on his back for the portage. Behind him tramped 
the other two men, silently, though side by 
side. 

Frank — picking her way over the stones, with 
Dallas Fraser following somewhat sulkily behind 
her, his hands in his pockets, not offering to help 
her as she turned her back on him — Frank glanced 
at the two, and saw they were not lumbermen. 
The nearest one was a stranger to her ; the other, 
with the wallet across his shoulder, was probably 
the doctor from down Tobique-way ? But surely 
this man was taller, broader — 


160 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


“ Dr. Kendal ! ” she cried out suddenly. 

He looked as if he could not trust his eyes. 

Yet, after all, there was no one like Fran- 
yoise. 

He stood still, and sent the guide on, with a 
hasty— 

“Tell Laforest I will be with him presently.” 

Then he turned to the girl. 

She put out both her hands to him ; laughing 
with the sound of tears in her voice, and a strange, 
unmirthful look on her white face. There was 
light enough yet in the sky shining down on them 
to show him that. 

“What has happened?” he asked her ea- 
gerly. 

But for a shade of anxiety for the look on her 
face, his own was beaming, eager ; in his eyes a 
gladness, almost a triumph, new to her. He 
glanced at Dallas Fraser ; it was easy to see he 
found him in the way, though he tried not to 
show it, as Fran§oise mentioned Mr. Fraser’s 
name, and hurriedly sketched the day’s advent- 
ures. 

The stranger stood by listening, and looking 
at the girl somewhat intently while she was 
speaking. When Kendal would have drawn him 
into the conversation, he stopped him with a 
warning hand upon his shoulder. 

But when she had finished, the stranger him- 


A. LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. Id 

self came a step nearer, and held out his hand to 
Fraser with bluff heartiness. 

*No doubt my little maid has been properly 
grateful to Mr. Fraser ; but she must let me add 
my thanks for losing the way, and so bringing 
Frank to meet me here.” 

“ Frank ?” — She was staring at him, her eyes 
rounded, her lips parted. 

With a glad cry she sprang into his arms, held 
out for her. 

“ Uncle Frank ! Can it possibly be Uncle 
Frank ?” 

“ Can it possibly be any one else for my little 
maid ? Or how many knights-errant has she 
roaming through the woods in search of her ? ” 

She was sure of Uncle Frank now, when he 
mocked at her gayly, as in the old days ; and she 
locked her hands over his arm, while the four 
moved on in the direction of the cottage. 

After all, the years had wrought less change 
in carrying the man from the edge of the forties 
into the fifties, than they had with the girl. 
They had blurred the likeness between the two 
Franks, which now was little more than a blond- 
ness brought down from a common Norman in- 
heritance. Fran$oise’s childish remembrance of 
him began to come back vividly, as they saun- 
tered on together. 

Kendal and Dallas were not sauntering; so 
11 


162 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


that these two behind were presently tete-a-tete. 
As soon as De Landremont perceived this, he grew 
graver. 

“ Little maid, why should I wait for a more 
convenient opportunity to disabuse you of an im- 
pression which my friend Kendal tells me has 
been rankling in your small breast almost ever 
since you and I parted ? It is old Marguite who 
has put it there. The mother and I are good 
friends enough, little maid — not at all the ene- 
mies Marguite would make us out.” 

“ You are so good. Uncle Frank ! ” 

“ And the mother so — ? No, no, that won’t 
quite do. Marguite, I see, has been representing 
me as a suffering victim. But let me tell you, 
child, I’ve been my own worst enemy ; and in 
taking Jean, instead of me, little Anne — ” 

“ Broke her word and your heart,” Fran9oise 
said impetuously, hanging her head as if the 
shame of the confession were her own. 

“ Neither the one nor the other : ‘ Men have 
died and worms have eaten them — ’ you know 
enough English to fill out the rest of that truism ? 
Little Anne’s word to me was broken long before, 
when her people overruled her with a high hand, 
and married her off to Smith’s money-bags. Aft- 
erward, when my mother fancied the rich young 
widow would make even a better match for me 
than the little Thibodeau would have been, and 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


163 


brought her to revisit us, it was not to be sup- 
posed that the old pledge would hold, however 
it might in my mother’s imagination and Mar- 
guite’s. This time she met Jean, who before 
had been away at college ; for you know he was 
younger than I. And just as I flattered myself I 
was winning her — I was disappointed at the 
time,” he broke olf. “ Furiously disappointed at 
the time, Frank, I own it to you ; I flung away 
from home in an angry outburst my mother 
never forgot. But disappointed is the word, not 
broken-hearted. And Anne was right : Jean’s 
love was better worth her having than such a 
thing as mine. A paltry thing, that could not 
even keep me from going wrong, with the mem- 
ory of a sweet woman like that.” 

He had been speaking in a superficial, almost 
careless way, which seemed in keeping with the 
whole man. Now, as if something deeper stirred 
for a breathing-space the shallow nature, his voice 
fell so that the girl pressed his arm. 

“ I am sure you did not go far wrong, TJncle 
Frank.” 

He started a little, and brought his absent 
gaze back from the wooded horizon to the small, 
fair head almost nestling against him. 

“ Farther than I would have you know of, child. 
But you must understand, once for all (for I’ve 
come many a mile now that you should under- 


164 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


stand it), that it was never little Anne’s short- 
coming that drove me there. And, on the other 
hand, it was not my fault,” he added, “ that my 
mother quarreled with Jean. I was off before 
that. There must have been some coureur des 
lois away back in those early Acadian days ; some 
wildness of the blood that flowed in through the 
La Tour veins to us De Landremonts. For I was 
never quite content until I had broken bonds, 
away out of hearing of a sound from home. The 
gold-fever was then at its height, and rumors of 
the California wonders had reached even here. It 
was not the gold, but the novelty of it all, that 
intoxicated me. I went out there ; but had drifted 
half-way East at the time the war between the 
States broke out — ” 

“ Oh, I remember, Uncle Frank ! Just after it 
was all over, you came to us at Liverpool : small 
as I was, I can recollect your battle-stories and 
adventures. I used to wonder why you didn’t 
still wear a sword, and pistols in your boots, as 
you told us the — what did you call them ? — bush- 
whackers ! — did. Oh, you see I have forgotten 
nothing ! ” 

“ Remembering so much, little maid, you 
ought to remember more : that the mother and I 
met as sister and brother then, and not as ene- 
mies. It was because we did so meet, that my 
mother refused to receive me at home afterward. 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


1G5 


She had quarreled with Jean and his wife on my 
account : she could not forgive me for deserting 
my own standard ; and that I should have cared 
to fight in a war between the States — should act- 
ually have entered the army in Missouri, Anne 
Thibodeau’s old home — it was altogether an of- 
fense so great, that nothing would atone, but my 
turning my back on what she called the Madame 
Jean faction.” 

“ Poor grandmamma ! ” the girl said, softly. 

De Landremont stopped, and looked at 
her. 

“ Eh ? Well, perhaps you are right. But I 
had forgotten to be sorry for her. I had been 
away so long, it only needed that bitter letter of 
hers, received at Liverpool, to drive me out a 
wanderer again. And whether I should ever have 
come back, if I had not met my old friend Ken- 
dal the other day in St. Louis — ” 

“ Your — old — friend ? And he heard me speak 
of Uncle Frank, and never told me that he knew 
him ! ” 

“He never knew me as De Landremont. 
When first I went away, in my disgust I left be- 
hind me everything that bound me to the past. 
We fought shoulder to shoulder through a long 
campaign, and he knew nothing earlier in my 
life than its California episode. From what he 
heard from you and others here, he began to sus- 


166 


A LITTLE MAID OE ACADIE. 


pect the identity of Frank Latour with Frank 
La Tour de Landremont ; and from that moment 
he set to work to trace me through old army 
friends. The other day — that is, ten days or two 
weeks ago — business of his own, in connection 
with getting back his confiscated estate, took him 
to St. Louis, where I came to meet him, having 
heard of his search for me. He told me some- 
thing of his story ; and perhaps I guessed at more, 
my little maid,” De Landremont added, smiling 
down on her significantly. “It was then that I 
learned from him all about this unfortunate mis- 
conception of yours ; and I thought the shortest 
way to lay that ugly bogey forever, was just to 
come back with him.” 

“Uncle Frank, 0 Uncle Frank, if you had 
come back to grandmamma before it was too 
late !” 

How the child must have loved the grand- 
mother ! She was so white, and the small hands 
holding by his arm shook so ! De Landremont 
was touched by her agitation. 

“ But it would always have been too late, little 
maid. My poor dear mother — rest her soul ! ” he 
put in piously— “ would have nothing by halves. 
To come back and settle down in the house she 
had built for me on a strip of the old farm ; to 
speculate a trifle in lumber ; to dabble a little in 
politics ; to be returned, perhaps, as French mem 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


1G7 


ber of the provincial Parliament — such a career, 
Heaven save the mark ! — in place of that of 
cattle-king, silver -king, American citizen, and 
might-be senator — and who knows what there- 
after, if Jack of clubs should turn out the right 
bower ? Eh, little maid, I’m afraid you don’t 
quite understand,” he said, catching her puzzled 
glance. “ But this you will : that even the Ma- 
dame Jean affair would have been easier for the 
dear old mother to forgive, than my bright little 
western American wife and couple of small na- 
tive Americans that are stubborn facts not to 
be blinked. You must make acquaintance with 
them all, one of these days, my little maid of 
Acadie.” 

Frank did not answer. Her heart was too 
full. She seemed to be looking at that lowly 
grave on the hill-side. If he had come back to see 
that — to cast himself face downward on the sod, 
praying, striving that some breath of his loving 
duty might yet reach his mother in the place of 
shades ! 

That, she could have understood : not this 
breezy, easy-going man of the world, with his 
mild regrets for what had happened, and his so 
ready owning to faults, that confession and atone- 
ment seemed much the same thing in his mind. 

And for years she had been making a tragedy 
out of this comedy ! 


168 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


“ Poor grandmamma!” she said to herself 
again. 

She was not listening to De Landremont’s 
next words ; which, indeed, were rather in pur- 
suance of his own train of thought than for her. 
Jean’s family should have it all — the old home- 
place, the estate which in Francis de Landre- 
mont’s enlarged vision was the merest bagatelle. 
Fran9oise, stumbling on at his side, and think- 
ing over and over, “ Poor grandmamma ! ” was 
brought hack to the present by the voice of Dallas 
Fraser, who stood still, a few yards in advance. 

“ That black streak on the lake is a canoe, 
and that speck farther over yonder is another. 
Can the messenger I sent have come already upon 
a party in search of us ? ” 

A few moments, and the foremost of the ca- 
noes had run up to the bank, and the guide was 
helping his one passenger ashore. 

“ Marie ! ” 

Fran9oise ran forward, glad for an instant to 
escape from the eyes of the men, who followed 
more slowly. 

“ Marie ! I did not think you would come so 
soon.” 

“ My dear child ! it has been long enough to 
me, I can assure you. How much longer it might 
have been, if we had not, in our wandering search 
for you, met your messenger — ” 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


1G9 


Frail 9 oise had drawn her forward. 

“ Uncle Frank — Dr. Kendal — this is my sister 
Marie — ” 

“John!” 

It was Marie’s voice that cut her short. 

With a flutter of her two white hands out- 
stretched, Marie had turned to Kendal. 

“ John, John, have you forgotten me ?” 

He stood staring at her, like a man half roused 
in the midst of a dream. 

She was brilliant, there in the waning light ; 
no vision of a dream could be brighter. But what 
is that to Kendal ? Just so a man might look 
who sees a ghost. 

And then she smiled. She was beautiful be- 
fore ; but now her beauty was bewildering. She 
came a pace nearer to him. 

“ Have you never a word of welcome for me, 
John?” 

He drew a long, hard breath, passing his 
hand heavily over his eyes. He never once 
glanced Fran 9 oise’s way, though somehow she 
felt he saw her all the while. He answered 
slowly : 

“ How is it you are not dead, Mary ? For 
twelve years you have allowed me to believe you 
were.” 

She glanced from him to the bystanders, 
shrugging her shoulders. 


170 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


“ Can we not wait to go into all that until we 
are alone ?” she said, lowering her voice. 

But he answered sternly : 

“ I have done with secrets. It is late to say 
it ; but at least I will have none of them now. 
If you are my wife — ” 

Marie — her face glowing and brilliant with 
what old Marguite called her “ beaute dujeoble,” 
which made naught of those twelve years, and 
changed her almost into the girl of barely seven- 
teen, whom Kendal well remembered— Marie was 
turning now from Kendal to where Fran9oise and 
Dallas had drawn insensibly together, standing on 
the outside of this scene ; and De Landremont, 
not without a certain twinkle of expectancy in his 
eyes, as at the anticipated hit of a well-known 
actress in a new role , was looking curiously over 
Fran§oise 5 s shoulder. 

“ Ah, is that you, monsieur Francis ?” Ma- 
rie nodded at him gayly. “ L always knew some 
day you would reappear. The hour for les reve- 
nants , is it not so ? Though I planned my com- 
ing back from the dead after a more romantic 
fashion, befitting the old story,” she said, her 
eyes alive with mocking spirits. “ Only, you see, 
John will bring me down to the blunt facts. 
When I proposed to mamma to come back from 
Europe for Frank, instead of sending for her, it 
was because the child’s letters were full of a cer- 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


171 


tain Dr. John Kendal, of whom I had lost sight, 
but whom I was sure I recognized, though I had 
not seen him since my school-girl days in St. 
Louis. I fancied if we met again, it might be as 
old friends — lovers, perhaps — ” 

The dark look on Kendal’s face cut her short. 

“Only, you see — ” she said again, “John 
will bring me down to the blunt fact that every 
man has a skeleton in his closet. I present you 
to John’s.” 

She made a sweeping courtesy as she spoke. 
“ He thought it was laid away underground. 
Perhaps he has told you, Frank, of his foolish 
marriage with a school-girl, when he was a young 
medical student in St. Louis, on the eve of mak- 
ing his way South into the army ? Oh, it was 
foolish, yery. I think, even at such an age, I 
should have seen that, if it had not been for my 
romantic Elise (my maid, you know, Frank), who 
aided and abetted the whole affair. I wrote you 
what I thought of it, you remember, John, when 
I lay, as every one believed, ill unto death, a few 
months later.” 

“I remember.” Kendal’s face was stern and 
set. That death-bed letter was safe never to be 
forgotten. There were sentences in it which he 
could have repeated, word for word, even now : 
“It is well I am dying — wretched girl, trapped 
into a marriage that can mean nothing but mis- 


172 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACAD IE. 


ery ! You were older than I : you should have 
known better. Perhaps you did know, John 
Kendal. Perhaps, bent as you were on going 
South, you counted on my fortune when your 
own should be confiscated ? And now my guar- 
dian has lost mine for me — and it is as well I am 
dying — ” 

“ It was a lie, then ! ” Kendal said between his 
set- teeth. 

“Yes.” Marie put up a deprecating hand. 
“But not mine, John. You remember Elise ? 
She is still with me ; such a clever soul — But 
too clever for once,” she corrected herself. “You 
see, she was romantic, as I said : she pictured to 
herself the terrible suspense the poor young gen- 
tleman would have to bear, and the months and 
months before another letter could get through 
the lines to him. And so, when the opportunity 
came to send this one, and I was lying between 
life and death, she added her little postscript, 
which said this was the last day of her poor young 
lady’s life, and the dear angel’s last words were 
to send monsieur this lock of her beautiful 
hair.” 

Marie said it with a mocking ring in her voice, 
which showed she was quoting Elise. 

“And so I died; and then I went abroad. 
For one must die, must not one, to go to para- 
dise ? Mamma and my good step-father, Frank’s 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 173 

father (you never heard me speak of them, John, 
for my Smith kindred had frightened me with 
that bogey of a step-father), sent for me to Europe 
when my fortune was lost ; and of course such a 
prospect was enough to keep a girl from dying 
outright. ” 

There was an utter silence for a moment. 

Marie broke it, turning, with one of her 
charming smiles, to Kendal. 

“ Have I sinned past forgiveness, John ? The 
doing of it was not mine. As for the undoing — 
Elise never told me of her postscript until we 
were on the other side of the ocean. And then I 
had lost all trace of you. The first I heard, you 
had been captured on the battle-field ; imprisoned, 
I could not tell where. I was young and inex- 
perienced ; poor Elise was always at my elbow, 
begging me not to betray her and have her sent 
adrift into the world. When at last Frank, writ- 
ing freely to me, after the old lady’s death, often 
mentioned you, it was I who planned that we 
should come for the child ourselves, instead of 
sending for her. I thought I should see for my- 
self if it were really John ! ” 

She had put her hands together, looking up 
at him pleadingly. 

But Kendal’s face was set as a flint. 

“And as a preliminary step,” he said — “it 
was you, then, who had the papers sent me, show- 


174 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


ing that by a little effort on my part I could re- 
cover my lost fortune ? I am sorry I could not 
have guessed the sender. I am sorry my journey 
has been successful. It was nothing to you that 
I should chafe myself near to death in prison — 
that, escaping to Canada just before the war end- 
ed, I should spend weary years in poverty and 
friendlessness. But as soon as the tide of fortune 
turns — ” 

“Mais, monsieur le docfceur, mon huomme — ” 

The voice behind him, breaking in on him, 
was that of Laforest’s patient wife. 

“My man is restless, monsieur; there is no 
keeping him still since Jean has told him mon- 
sieur le docteur is come.” 

Without a word, Kendal turned on his heel 
and followed the woman indoors. 

Ko one spoke at first ; his swift step echoed in 
the stillness, on the gravelly slope. 

Then Marie, rather pale, but with a resolute 
gleam in her eyes, faced round on the three stand- 
ing together. 

“ You have a homely saying, Fran9oise, that 
one may not hope to save the hare and the cab- 
bages. Yet that is what I am going to do,” she 
said, with a gay little nod of defiance to Dame 
Fortune, who, with a turn of her wheel, had 
made the task so much more difficult than Marie 
had expected. “As we are all en famille — ” 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


175 


with a covert glance at Dallas Fraser — “ I may as 
well say that, now the choux are safe, I shall de- 
vote my attention to the lievre .” 

De Landremont made an impatient move- 
ment. 

“ Take care what you are about, Marie ! Ken- 
dal is no dull creature, to be caught in a springe. 
If you don’t know a man when you see one, let 
me tell you what he is. The bravest comrade a 
man ever fought side by side with, in the ranks ; 
the gentlest soul to pain and suffering of others ; 
the stoutest heart to bear his own — ” 

To Frank, half putting out her hand with a 
rush of sympathy toward the speaker : then let- 
ting it fall, in a sudden sense of shame that only 
through another’s witness did she know this 
friend of hers at last — to Frank, in a vivid flash 
of memory, came back a certain passage which 
Kendal himself had read to her one winter even- 
ing, out of an old-time book, for which he had 
sent away. She was startled by Marie’s voice 
demurely taking up De Landremont’s tone : 

“ ‘ A syr Launcelot, ther thou lyest, that were 
head of all crysten knyghtes ! And thou were 
neuer matched of none erthly knyghtes hands. 
And thou were the curtoyste knyghte that euer 
bare shelde. And thou were the truest frend to 
thy louer that euer bestradde hors, and thou were 
the truest louer of a synfull man that euer loued 


170 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


woman. And thou were the kyndest man that 
euer stroke with swerde. And thou were the 
mekest man and the gentyllest that euer ete in 
halle amonge ladyes. And thou were the sternest 
knyghte to thy mortall foo that euyr put spere in 
the reyst.’ ” 

“I got it by heart, you see,” she added, light- 
ly — “in those old days when I was an apt pupil, 
and John a young enthusiast, who would have 
me admire his heroes, not foreseeing he would be 
dubbed Sir Launcelot himself. But only see, 
while we stand here romancing, yonder comes 
the bateau across the lake, with Arsene in 
it!” 

On the mention of Ars&ne, De Landremont 
strolled down to the bank, half expectant, and 
more than half glad of the break in a scene which 
was to him rather embarrassing, though Marie 
did not seem to find it so. 

“ Mrs. Osborne is with Arsine ; but you see I 
did not wait for a chaperon,” she went on, mock- 
ingly, “but hurried on with the guide, when he 
told me my husband was sent for, to a wounded 
man here. Perhaps the wounded man will be 
the better for a nurse as well as a doctor. So I 
shall stay to see what I can do to help the doctor. 
— Cousin Dallas, you will take Frank out in the 
canoe to meet the others, and turn them back 
with you to the camp. And you can tell them 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


177 


better than Frank, what has happened : the hap- 
py meeting that has taken place ; odd bit of melo- 
drama out of real life. Explain it all for me, 
there’s a good brother. ” 

She broke off abruptly, throwing up her hands 
with a deprecating gesture, as if she had used that 
word inadvertently. 

And so, indeed, Franchise supposed she 
had. 

But there was a twinkle in Dallas Fraser’s 
eyes, as if he saw through the pretense. He re- 
joined at once : 

“ Your brother indeed, if Frank will have it 
so. She has not told me ; though I have asked 
her, and am still waiting for my answer.” 

He had turned to Frank, holding out his hand. 

When, flushed and downcast, she made no 
movement to meet it, he took hers with gentle 
force, and drew it in his arm. 

Marie stood and looked at them, a faint smile 
veiling certain bitter lines about her mouth. 
Then, “ Bless you, my children !” she said, gay- 
ly, waving them a stage-benediction ; and flitted 
from them into the cottage. 

For a long moment, Fran§oise never moved, 
her eyes fixed on the doorway through which 
her sister had vanished. Then with a shiver 
her fingers closed unconsciously on Dallas’s 
arm. 


12 


178 A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 

“ How can we go away, and leave — them — so ? 
And yet—” 

She was thinking of monsieur le docteur. And 
yet must it not be better she should go ? 

Dallas decided the question for her. 

De Landremont was already paddling off to 
meet Arsine, in the pirogue which had brought 
Marie. Without further loss of time, Dallas 
pushed off his canoe into the water, and lifted 
Frank in. 

“Your sister is a very clever woman, my dar- 
ling ; we must leave it to her. One of these days, 
sweetheart, you will know it never does to inter- 
vene between husband and wife.” 

Nevertheless, he was very slow in moving off 
from shore ; dipping his paddle idly in the water, 
and lingering there in full view from the cot- 
tage. 

Suddenly in the open doorway, with the moon- 
light shining down on them, and the glow of the 
hearth-fire making a bright background, Marie 
and Kendal appeared. She was leaning with one 
hand on his arm, the other fluttering her hand- 
kerchief in gay farewell. 

Almost a word had done it. 

“That child, John — she stood staring after 
me as if she expected a bit of spider-and-fly busi- 
ness when I ventured in to you. Can not you 
manage — (she says you have been so good to 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


179 


her !) — to give her a cheerful send-off, by way 
of happy omen ? She is just engaged to Dallas 
Fraser.” 

So, without word or glance, and with a face 
as set as death, he followed, and let Marie act her 
little farce with him by way of puppet. 

Would it always be a farce — a tragedy ? or a 
mere comedy of modern life, in which the tragedy 
is so well masked that no one need suspect the 
grim traits underneath ? 

Out there, before they reach the path of moon- 
light on the lake, Dallas turns round on Frank. 

“It is he who is the hero,” he says. 

“ Head of all crysten knights, and never 
matched by earthly knight’s hands. But, Frank 
— the truest lover of a sinful man, that ever loved 
woman ! ” 

A sudden dimness gathers in the girl’s eyes ; 
but they do not fall under his own. 

Dallas shifts his paddle into his left hand, and 
reaches out his right for Frank’s. 

“ They’ll be upon us in another moment — 
those people yonder — and yet you have not told 
me if you love me, Frank ? ” 

How fair she looks, with that soft shining on 
her bright, uncovered head, as a sudden current 
sweeps them on into the moon’s path. Lighted up 
so, they are in full view from the other canoes. 


1<80 


A LITTLE MAID OF ACADIE. 


Dallas, with an air of disgust, grips his paddle 
again ; and Fran§oise is half glad of the respite 
for to-night — until she catches sight of his face. 

Then she leans forward slightly, as she trails 
her hand in the water : 

“Have I not, Dallas ?” she says. 


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“Nouma is a subtile character, far more subtile than anything 
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FLORENCE WARDENS PREVIOUS NOVELS. 


The House on the Marsh. 
At the World’s Mercy. 
Deldee ; or, The Iron Hand. 


A Prince op Darkness. 
A Vagrant Wipe. 
Doris’s Fortune. 


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“GOOD FORM” IN ENGLAND. 

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OR, DIRECTIONS, FOR AVOIDING IMPROPRIETIES IN CONDUCT 
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